“You can’t live in this town, you can only survive it.” There’s only one thing you need to know about Beartown: hockey. Its people live, eat, and breathe by the laws of hockey. Beyond that there isn’t much to it—only a few steady jobs, no tourists, and surrounded by forest in a part of Sweden where the frigid air of winter only takes a break for a month or two in the summer. ... Read More...
The Heart’s Invisible Furies
Cyril Avery’s birth was not a propitious one. He came into the world onto the floor of a tiny apartment, next to the unconscious body of his mother’s roommate, with the roommate’s lover lying dead on the stairs below. It was Ireland in 1945 and the roommate and the lover were also teens, but they were men and as such had been hunted down by one’s father. From this ... Read More...
Girl in Snow by Danya Kukafka
In real life, the victim of murder should always remain at the forefront of the story, but in fiction there is no such rule. The girl in Girl in Snow is Lucinda Hayes, a pretty teenager found dead on a school playground. Someone has killed her and while the townspeople may care, author Danya Kukafka is more interested in Cameron, an odd boy who likes to watch people in their ... Read More...
Tornado Weather: A Novel
The town is Colliersville, Indiana, but it could be any number of small towns scattered across the United States. Towns where, as the jobs get smaller, the economic disparity gets bigger. This is where Deborah Kennedy chooses to set her debut novel, Tornado Weather and it’s the epitome of the tinderbox that is America right now. It’s a greedy dairy farmer who, in an effort to ... Read More...
Miss Jane by Brad Watson
Summer is generally a time when I enjoy lighter books, those that don't take up too much brain space. Sometimes, though, it’s also lovely to disengage from all the activity, find a shaded space and give yourself up to gorgeous prose and stories with meaning. Miss Jane, one of my favorite novels from 2016 is out in paperback this week and fits the bill for this kind of reading. ... Read More...
Salt Houses: A Novel
There are plenty of times when fiction ventures into territory that is unfamiliar—in fact, that’s one of the reasons I love it so much. But Salt Houses, the debut novel from Hala Alyan is about a subject that I almost can’t wrap my mind around. The fact of having been driven out, by force or war, from not just your home, but virtually every country where you’ve settled. For ... Read More...
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