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City on Fire

October 21, 2015

city on fire

  If you follow the publishing world then you know that Garth Hallberg was paid 2 million dollars for his debut novel, City on Fire, a story of NYC, wrapped around a wealthy family, an attempted murder, and the blackout of 1977. The Hamilton-Sweeneys are the family, and are as dysfunctional as one would expect in a work of literary fiction. There are secrets, bad ... Read More...

11 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: contemporary life, debut, historical fiction, Knopf, literary, Manhattan

A Window Opens

September 30, 2015

a window opens

  It seems that I stumbled into a payload of modern American life fiction. Two weeks ago I reviewed Days of Awe and now I’m back with A Window Opens by Elisabeth Egan, a female centric novel that may seem as if it is weighted with an overload of heavy events but it’s not. What it is is real, messy, complicated, and confusing with new jobs, shifting marital ... Read More...

11 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: chick lit, contemporary fiction, debut, Simon & Schuster

Did You Ever Have a Family

September 21, 2015

did you ever have a family

  If you take a major event and separate out all the people involved in that event—whether responsible for it or impacted by it, you get wildly divergent impressions about what actually happened. This is what author Bill Clegg does so soulfully in his debut novel, Did You Ever Have a Family. June’s daughter Lolly, her daughter’s fiancé, June’s ex-husband, and her ... Read More...

6 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, contemporary fiction, debut, family, literary, Scout Press

Fates and Furies: A Novel

September 14, 2015

fates and furies

Hello, dear Reader! It’s Monday and I know for a lot of you it’s a busy day, getting back into the weekly grind, so if you’re on the run and don’t have time for a full review, here’s what you need to know: read Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies. If you’re a metrics kind of person I’ll make it even easier—I give it 5 stars. Now go. Go and buy it, check it out at the library, ... Read More...

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

Days of Awe

September 9, 2015

days of awe

  Normally, if I were to begin by saying a novel was messy it would not be a good thing, but Days of Awe by Lauren Fox is a messy novel, much in the same way life is messy. Isabel Moore is a wife, mother, and fifth grade teacher. She lives a somewhat insulated live surrounded by her husband, daughter Hannah, and best friend of fifteen years, Josie. When Josie is killed in ... Read More...

6 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: contemporary fiction, Knopf, literary

Last Night in Montreal

September 2, 2015

  On a cold snowy night a seven-year-old girl leaves her mother’s house when her father beckons her from the yard, beginning an odyssey that continues into her adulthood. Her birth name is Lilia but as she and her father spend the next decade moving from town to town to avoid capture her name changes so frequently it’s hard to remember. Not that it matters, she does not ... Read More...

14 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, debut, literary, mystery

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