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The Library at Mount Char

October 30, 2015

library at mount char

When Carolyn was eight, she and a number of her neighborhood friends lost their homes and families and were subsequently adopted by a man they called Father. And that’s as normal as Scott Hawkins’ debut novel The Library at Mount Char gets. The rest is a story that is wildly, imaginatively over-the-top good. You see it turns out that Father has been around for possibly 60,000 ... Read More...

9 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: debut, fantasy, magical realism, mystery

Gold Fame Citrus

October 7, 2015

gold fame citrus

  Nature refused to offer herself to them. The water, the green, the mammalian, the tropical, the semitropical, the leafy, the verdant, the motherloving citrus, all of it was denied them and had been denied them so long that with each day, each project, it became more and more impossible to conceive of a time when it had not been denied them. Gold Fame Citrus opens in ... Read More...

3 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: debut, dystopia, literary, Riverhead Books, science fiction

Under the Udala Trees

October 5, 2015

under the udala trees

  In Under the Udala Trees Ijeoma is only twelve years old when the civil war in Nigeria begins and her mother must leave her behind while she tries to establish a life for them in the north, a safer part of the country. It is 1968 and they live in Biafra, a southern state that has seceded from the nation. The war has already claimed her father and now her mother asks a ... Read More...

6 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: Africa, book clubs, cultural, debut, historical fiction, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, literary, nigeria

In the Language of Miracles

August 31, 2015

in the language of miracles

The American Dream is portrayed in any number of novels, often from the perspective of the struggle to reach it, but In the Language of Miracles Samir and Nagla Al-Menshawy are Egyptians who have already achieved the dream. He is a doctor and they live in a nice New Jersey suburb with their three children. They have been close friends with their next-door neighbors the ... Read More...

3 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: American life, book clubs, contemporary fiction, cultural, debut, literary, Viking

The Girl Who Slept with God

August 26, 2015

girl who slept with god

Even within their evangelical Christian community the Quanbeck family is known as unusual, but in The Girl Who Slept with God, fourteen-year-old Jory is used to it. Until, that is, her devout sister, Grace, is allowed, at seventeen, to go off on a mission to Mexico, and returns pregnant. The potential embarrassment to their father within their religious circle is such that he ... Read More...

2 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: American life, book clubs, debut, literary, religion, Viking

The Star Side of Bird Hill

July 29, 2015

star

  It’s time for summer vacation but rather than spend it at home in Brooklyn Dionne and her sister Phaedra have been shipped off to Barbados, which may sound like paradise to many of us, but not for Dionne. At sixteen this was going to be the summer she broke out of childhood and into the fun life of leading the cool group of girls at her school. Instead, she is stuck ... Read More...

5 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: Barbados, coming-of-age, cultural, debut, Penguin Press

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