Towards the end of last year, the only reading that worked for me was fast paced thrillers. More plot, more action, less literary. This year is taking a turn (or a return) to the fiction that’s always drawn me in, the kind where the words matter more than anything else. Laird Hunt’s latest, Zorrie, epitomizes this style; the power of simplicity. Zorrie is a young girl in ... Read More...
Landslide: A Novel by Susan Conley
When you live in northern coast of Maine you accept your husband will very likely be a fisherman and your life will revolve around water. This is the case for Jill, with her family going so far as to live on a small island. For the most part they’ve made it work, even with Kit being gone for months on end and their having two teenage boys. But now a boat explosion has left him ... Read More...
The Charmed Wife: A Novel
When it came out, Olga Grushin’s novel Forty Rooms blew me away. I had never read a piece of fiction that so perfectly encapsulated many of my feelings about marriage and being a woman. It was with great excitement that I saw Grushin was back with a new novel. Actually, excitement and trepidation because the bar would be high and Grushin looked to be mining the same ... Read More...
The Divines: A Novel
Every year there it seems a different theme emerges in fiction. Last year it was twins (The Grammarians, The Vanishing Half, Thin Girls), but this year, although it’s only January, I have three novels in my winter reading that are about girls’ boarding schools. What is it about that subject that entices those of us who were no more likely to attend one than go into outer space? ... Read More...
The House in the Cerulean Sea
Often when it’s time to begin a book review I try and draw from the facts—plot, place, biographical details. Because I read so much (and don’t have the discipline I should) specifics tend to blur by the time I sit down to write so in starting there I bring the book back to me. All of that is moot when it comes to novels like The House in the Cerulean Sea. I can sum up the book ... Read More...
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
Nora Seed is a very unhappy woman. At 35 she feels her life is mainly filled with regrets, that the future holds no hope, and that she contributes nothing to the world. When her beloved cat dies, it’s the last straw. She decides to kill herself with a drug overdose. What happens next is best explained by the book itself: “Between life and death there is a library”, she ... Read More...
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