A young woman is condemned to death in Iceland at a time when there were no jails so a family is ordered to house her for her final months. A young priest is assigned to be her spiritual guide to repentance before her execution. All this in 1828 the summer before Agnes Magnúsdóttir is to be put to death in Hannah Kent’s debut novel, Burial Rites. Agnes has been mistreated her ... Read More...
The Bone Season
The last time I read a YA book, I was a young adult. OK, not true, I read Hunger Games, but who didn’t? I saw The Bone Season at Book Expo America and thought I’d give it a try, partly because it sounded interesting and partly because it was the first in a seven part series which means, if I like it, I’m assured of future reading (running out of books is a very real book-aholic ... Read More...
The Never List
The Never List is the debut novel from Koethi Zan. It is also the name of the list best friends Jennifer and Sarah keep after they are in an accident where Jennifer’s mother is killed. Their obsession with what can go wrong in the world, and how to prevent it, fills notebooks and follows them to college. No walking home from bars or parties, no riding with strangers, no getting ... Read More...
Note to Self
While it seems to be a contradiction in terms to describe a novel as both sharp and sluggish, it applies (in the best way) to Alina Simone’s debut, Note to Self. She melds the jagged edge anxiety of an unemployed woman in NYC with the ennui that means getting out of bed is a Herculean task. She woke up in the mornings already exhausted by the possibilities. The woman is ... Read More...
The First Rule of Swimming
It did not help that on Rosmarina there was no such thing as privacy, one house so near to the next that a man could hear his neighbor’s toilet flush. Grudges went back generations and children were judged by things their parents had done, sometimes years before their birth. Magdalena and her younger sister Jadranka live on the island of Rosmarina with their ... Read More...
Crazy Rich Asians
“I don’t think she cares how fat her ankles get. Do you know how much she inherited when her father died? I heard she and her five brothers got seven hundred million each." When a novel begins with a woman and her children being turned away from a fancy hotel and she’s so upset her husband buys the hotel that same night, you can count me in. Kevin Kwan doesn’t miss ... Read More...
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