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The Sellout: A Novel

March 28, 2016

sellout

How do you review a book when you’re not quite certain that you should or even that you should have been allowed to read it? This was the question in my mind after finishing Paul Beatty’s The Sellout.  The novel is set in a ghetto outside Los Angeles called Dickens and is about a young black man whose childhood is spent being homeschooled and basically tortured by his father, a ... Read More...

10 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, contemporary fiction, humor, pop culture, racism, satire, social issues

Forty Rooms

February 15, 2016

forty rooms

It is no small feat to write a novel about one woman’s life that taps into the universality of all women’s lives but Olga Grushin accomplishes just that in her new novel, Forty Rooms. With a construct based on the belief that— Forty is God’s way of testing the human spirit. It’s the limits of man’s endurance, beyond which you are supposed to learn something true each ... Read More...

11 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, contemporary life, literary, Putnam

Unbecoming

December 2, 2015

unbecoming

  Unbecoming follows a young woman named Grace from present day Paris to New York City and even Garland, Tennessee, slipping back and forth as her story and life unspool. In Paris, she is not even Grace but calls herself Julie and works for a woman who restores antiques and pays cash. As a young girl there was no stability in her life so when she met Riley in the fourth grade ... Read More...

3 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, mystery, thriller

Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II

November 25, 2015

Within the first 15 pages of Savage Continent by Keith Lowe I learned that by the end of World War II: The Germans had destroyed 93% of Warsaw’s buildings 18-20 million Germans were rendered homeless due to the destruction of their cities 70,000 villages in the USSR were obliterated either by the Germans or by their own troops to avoid providing any supplies or ... Read More...

8 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Non-fiction Tagged: Europe, history, St. Martin's Press, WWII

Infinite Home

November 9, 2015

infinite home

Edith and her husband Declan bought their Brooklyn brownstone 66 years ago and have been living in it and renting out its apartments ever since. Now Declan has been gone for decades and the brownstone is host to the elderly Edith and four tenants. Infinite Home by Kathleen Alcott is the story of this odd collection of souls. There is the artist, Thomas, who suffers a stroke ... Read More...

11 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, contemporary fiction, literary, Riverhead Books

The Given World

April 27, 2015

given

When Riley is thirteen her brother Mick is declared missing in Vietnam. This news kills what little desire she has to stay in their small town and by the time she is eighteen she is gone, making her way from Montana to San Francisco to see the ocean and to escape every facet of life that might remind her of her brother. She leaves behind her parents, a boyfriend and her newborn ... Read More...

4 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, debut, literary, Vietnam, Vietnam War

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