Lisa Bellow is blonde, pretty and popular—everything every young girl wants to be in middle school. Unfortunately, she is also well on her way to being a complete bitch. Her popularity is a weapon she wields against all the other less self-assured girls in the 8h grade, including Meredith Oliver. So, when Lisa is abducted it breaks open a jar of conflicting emotions in ... Read More...
The Book of Unknown Americans
We’re the unknown Americans, the ones no one even wants to know, because they’ve been told they’re supposed to be scared of us and because maybe if they did take the time to get to know us, they might realize we’re not that bad, maybe even we’re a lot like them. And who would they hate then? When their daughter, Maribel, suffers a traumatic brain injury that ... Read More...
Perfect Little World: A Novel
On Monday I wrote about Swimming Lessons, a novel with prose that evinced an emotional response from me, even when the story did not work so well. Today’s review is about a book that is almost the complete opposite. It’s unusual for me to like fiction that didn’t impact me emotionally, but I did with Kevin Wilson’s new novel, Perfect Little World. I was devoid of much ... Read More...
I Liked My Life
Shortly after we meet Madeline it becomes clear that she is dead and that I Liked My Life is going to be one of those books about a dead person hovering over the lives of the people they left behind. The good news is that this is not a bad thing. She doesn’t write the novel with much spiritual angst on Maddy’s part—either as to where she is now or why she’s there. ... Read More...
Girlchild by Tupelo Hassman
Well, well, well…finally, after two months of all-right-but-not-great reading I’ve been knocked off my feet. Not by a new release, but by a 2013 novel from my Goodreads to-read list. I’m not going to quibble; I’m just thrilled to have read something I loved so much that it’s hard to find the best words for it. Tupelo Hassman’s Girlchild is a piercing novel of childhood ... Read More...
Idaho: A Novel by Emily Ruskovich
When a mother brutally murders one of her young children in the first quarter of a novel there is an expectation that the motivation behind the act will be a theme or, maybe, her backstory and how it led to such an act, but in Emily Ruskovich’s debut, Idaho, neither happens. I picked up, put down and tried to re-engage this novel multiple times in the course of several ... Read More...
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