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How to Build a Girl

September 24, 2014

build a girl

I want to be a self-made woman. I want to conjure myself out of every sparkling, fast-moving thing I can see. I want to be the creator of me. I’m gonna begat myself. Caitlin Moran’s How to Build a Girl is the hell-bent lovechild of Angela’s Ashes and Almost Famous—overlarge, impoverished family with a drunken non-working father and a teen daughter with a love of music and ... Read More...

9 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, Coffee House Press, coming-of-age, debut, Ireland, teen years

The Miniaturist: A Novel

August 25, 2014

miniaturist

Set in 1686 The Miniaturist by debut author Jessie Burton is the spellbinding story of an eighteen-year-old girl married off to an older merchant who lives in Amsterdam. She arrives on his doorstep with no idea of what marriage entails or the fact that she has been procured to enhance his reputation, for her family is poor but with a pedigree. Little does she know that her ... Read More...

16 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: 17th century, book clubs, ecco, historical fiction, Holland, magical realism

Vintage: A Novel

August 15, 2014

vintage

Hourglass Vintage is a charming used clothing shop in Madison, Wisconsin. It is also where three women at very different stages of life meet in Vintage, the debut novel from author Susan Gloss. Violet is the owner,  Amithi is a middle-aged Indian woman, who brings in much of her jewelry and clothes to sell, and April is a pregnant eighteen-year-old who thought she would be ... Read More...

4 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: chick lit, debut, fashion, William Morrow

California: A Novel

August 11, 2014

california

There is no prelude in Edan Lepucki’s debut novel, California, no introduction to life in a time of normalcy. Instead, the novel begins with Cal and Frida living in a small house in a forest somewhere in the U.S. but we don’t know where because state names are no longer used. The dystopia is in full swing as America has finally collapsed due to climate change, the oil crisis, ... Read More...

14 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, debut, dystopia, Little Brown and Company, science fiction

Everything I Never Told You

June 25, 2014

favorite debuts of 2014

Celeste Ng’s debut novel Everything I Never Told You is the story of the Lee family. They live in Ohio where the father James is a professor and wife Marilyn stays at home and raises Nathan, Lydia, and Hannah. This is the Rockwell painting version but within those broad strokes there is the kernel, the seed that determines how this story will grow. The source is the very love ... Read More...

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

Young God: A Novel

June 13, 2014

young god

Within the first eight pages of Young God, thirteen-year-old Nikki jumps off a cliff into a pool of water below after being dared, flirts with her mother’s boyfriend, and then watches her mother die as she attempts the same jump from the cliff. By the end of the second chapter, she has had sex with the boyfriend, stolen his car and his bag of drugs, and moved back into her ... Read More...

4 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: contemporary fiction, debut, Farrar Straus Giroux

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