Japan is known as having a culture that prizes social conformity and adherence to societal values. In such a country, what would it be like to be a young woman whose nature keeps her from understanding these unspoken guidelines? For Keiko Furukuro, the narrator of Convenience Store Woman, it is not difficult. For everyone around her, especially her family, it is an ongoing ... Read More...
A Burning: A Novel by Megha Majumdar
Jivan is a young woman living with her parents in a slum in India. She is a sales clerk at a nice clothing store. Everyone around her is shocked then when she is arrested for the bombing of a commuter train that killed over 100 people. She is the nexus at the center of Megha Majumdar’s novel, A Burning. The novel’s other two narrators are PT Sir, a gym teacher who knew her when ... Read More...
Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan
At 22 Ava decides the best way to have a happy life is to move as far from Dublin as possible. She chooses Hong Kong where she is hired by a private elementary school to teach English grammar. She makes one friend, Julian, who is an investment banker, but what begins as friendship segues into something else. What that is is hard to define in Naoise Dolan’s subtle, but sharp ... Read More...
If I Had Your Face
I would live your life so much better than you if I had your face. Last week, I visited historical Korea when I read Pachinko. I learned so much about the country, but once again, fiction is taking me into an aspect of Korea I had no idea existed. I know about the South Korean beauty business. It’s highly innovative with yummy products. What I didn’t know is the ... Read More...
The Beauty of Your Face
All of her career Afaf has been a teacher. Now, she is the principal of a Muslim school for girls in a Chicago suburb. She’s also face-to-face with the man who has gone through her school shooting her students. As the minutes between life and possible death tick by in The Beauty of Your Face, her mind travels to her past and the event that tore her family apart—the ... Read More...
Valentine: A Novel by Elizabeth Wetmore
When you encounter a scene like the one that opens Elizabeth Wetmore’s novel, Valentine, and the words …she imagines him facedown in the dust, lips and cheeks scoured by sand, his thirst relieved by only the blood in his mouth. sear themselves on your brain you know you are in for high-intensity reading and immersion in a heartbreaking world. A world where a 14-year-old girl ... Read More...
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