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Of Things Gone Astray

February 16, 2015

Magical realism is the moving force behind author Janina Matthewson’s, Of Things Gone Astray, an enchanting novel about the everyday realities of life. In it she follows six different people in London who wake up one day to find that something important in their lives has disappeared. For Mrs. Featherby it is the entire front wall of her house, for Robert his job—literally. His ... Read More...

4 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, debut, magical realism, short stories, The Friday Project

The Jaguar’s Children

February 2, 2015

jaguar's children

  There is always some fact in fiction but in The Jaguar’s Children by John Vaillant there is likely to be much more than expected. The story is a simple one in terms of characters and staging because it takes place inside a water tanker truck over the course of three days when it is left in the desert near Nogales, Arizona after stopping due to mechanical problems. The ... Read More...

5 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, contemporary fiction, debut, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, literary, Mexico, social issues

We Need to Talk About Kevin

December 10, 2014

we need to talk

  The point is, I don’t know what exactly I’d foreseen would happen when Kevin was first hoisted to my breast. I hadn’t foreseen anything exactly. I wanted what I could not imagine. I wanted to be transformed; I wanted to be transported. I wanted a door to open and a whole new vista to expand before me that I had never known was out there. The holidays are not generally the ... Read More...

12 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: contemporary life, crime, family, Harper, horror, literary

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

December 3, 2014

Billy lynn

Imagine you are a nineteen-year-old soldier and while stationed in Iraq your squad came under insurgent attack in an isolated area. You commit a heroic act of bravery and leave your vehicle to try and save a friend who is being dragged away by the enemy. A Fox news crew captures the entire attack and when it goes viral you are all brought back to the United States to be ... Read More...

5 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: American life, book clubs, contemporary life, ecco, war

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

A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing

October 22, 2014

girl half formed

  The heart cannot be wrung and wrung. Eimear McBride brings her main character to life with prose so fractured that A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing reads a bit like Clockwork Orange. There is no made-up language, but McBride uses a combination of Magnetic Poetry and Yahtzee to throw out words in random order with punctuation as an afterthought. Abandon any hope for sentence ... Read More...

12 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged: Coffee House Press, contemporary fiction, debut, literary

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