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Our Endless Numbered Days

March 18, 2015

endless

There are few things more important to little girls than their fathers and Peggy is no exception. Her German mother is a famous concert pianist but she is often brusque and busy while her father has friends who come over and hang out, smoking and talking about exciting things she doesn’t fully understand. He plays, calls her Rapunzel and has projects that involve her. He is at ... Read More...

13 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, debut, literary, mystery, Tin House

Free Range Reading: Tinkers

December 8, 2014

tinkers

Tinkers opens with George Crosby, lying on a bed in the living room of the home he built himself, as his mind swirls and flows between the reality of his family gathered to bid him goodbye to the most exquisite reminiscences on life itself and his place in its great tiled framework. …I will remain a set of impressions porous and open to combination with all of the other ... Read More...

3 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, family, literary, New England

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

November 10, 2014

we are all completely

Narrator Rosemary Cooke begins We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves in the middle of her family’s story, which is a quick indication of how this unusual and highly imaginative novel is going to go. The year is 1996 and she’s in her fifth year of college. A gregarious child she has morphed into a quiet and secretive young woman, largely due to the circumstances regarding the ... Read More...

4 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, contemporary fiction, family, literary, mystery, Putnam

The Miniaturist: A Novel

August 25, 2014

miniaturist

Set in 1686 The Miniaturist by debut author Jessie Burton is the spellbinding story of an eighteen-year-old girl married off to an older merchant who lives in Amsterdam. She arrives on his doorstep with no idea of what marriage entails or the fact that she has been procured to enhance his reputation, for her family is poor but with a pedigree. Little does she know that her ... Read More...

16 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: 17th century, book clubs, ecco, historical fiction, Holland, magical realism

Mambo in Chinatown

June 23, 2014

mambo in chinatown

Jean Kwok is back with Mambo in Chinatown, another tenderly crafted novel about the assimilation process for Chinese immigrants in America. This time we’re absorbed into the life of Charlie Wong, a twenty-two year old woman, who, as the novel begins, is working as a dishwasher in a restaurant where her father is the master noodle-maker. When she has the opportunity to take ... Read More...

6 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, cultural, Riverhead Books

The Pearl that Broke its Shell

May 7, 2014

pearl

Nadia Hashimi merges the past with the present in the story of two women from one family. Rahima has the grave misfortune to be yet another daughter born into her family. In Afghanistan the lack of sons is a social and economic disaster. Her father is addicted to opium and does little or no work. Without a son to go out in the world and shop and work for the family their ... Read More...

8 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: Afghanistan, book clubs, cultural, historical fiction, William Morrow

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