Who are the brown girls? When Daphne Palasi Andreades’s novel, Brown Girls, opens it’s Nadira, Khadija, Anjali, Yesenia, and Sophie, a group of 10-year-olds growing up in the “dregs of Queens”. In under 250 pages they pass from childhood to old age in lives that are as singular as they are relatable. Not to mention riveting. Andreades makes bold stylistic choices in Brown ... Read More...
Joan is Okay
Joan is happy with her life. She loves her job as an ICU doctor at a NYC hospital. Her boss thinks she’s amazing. She has a nice apartment in a doorman building. Why then do so many of the people around her think she needs fixing? Her older brother believes there’s something wrong with her because she’s not married with children. Her new neighbor thinks she needs friends and ... Read More...
No Land to Light On
Despite being five months pregnant Sama goes to the airport to surprise her husband, Hadi, on his return from his father’s funeral. Only to be met by a large crowd of angry people, with signs, yelling. She can’t enter the building so tries calling him. Amidst the noise, they only speak long enough for Hadi to tell her they won’t let him out, that his passport has been taken ... Read More...
Honor: A Novel by Thrity Umrigar
When Smita arrives in Mumbai she thinks she’s there to help a good friend undergoing surgery. Otherwise, even as a global journalist, she has never returned to the country her family left when she was a teenager. Now, in Thrity Umrigar’s new novel, Honor, she’s forced to confront her past while coming face-to-face with another young woman horribly impacted by the same forces in ... Read More...
My 6 Favorite Debuts of 2021
Happy Monday and welcome to my first yearend best-of lists. Today is a favorite category: best debuts. Finding new authors is one of my greatest reading pleasures and 2021 proved to be a very good year. Of all my reading, 38% was debut authors and of those debuts I rated 36% 3.5 stars or higher, with 3.5 being my baseline for a book I’d recommend to others. Finally, of ... Read More...
All Together Now
After State of Terror I was in desperate need of reading that would unclench my jaw. I was grateful to find it with Matthew Norman’s All Together Now, an entertaining novel about a group of high school friends now in their 30s, coming back together for the first time in almost a decade. Robbie is a math whiz, the kind of guy who can do algebra in his head (I hate that!). His ... Read More...
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