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The First Rule of Swimming

June 19, 2013

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...

1 Comment
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, cultural, debut, Eastern Europe, Little Brown and Company

Crazy Rich Asians

June 12, 2013

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...

4 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: China, contemporary life, cultural, debut, Doubleday, satire, wealth

Golden Boy: A Novel

May 22, 2013

Golden Boy

This spring has been a marvelous one for wildly creative authors and their unusual creations. The trend continues with Abigail Tarttelin’s debut novel, Golden Boy, and its tender protagonist, Max. Max is sixteen and in addition to the burdens of being a teenager he is saddled with a secret that is kept even from his own brother. Max is intersex or what used to be known as a ... Read More...

5 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: Atria Books, book clubs, coming-of-age, contemporary life, literary

The Morels

May 1, 2013

The Morels

The Morels is Christopher Hacker’s provocative debut novel about a novel that begins with a chance encounter between the narrator and an old classmate named Arthur Morel. The narrator, who in an interesting twist, remains anonymous throughout the book, is attempting to become a documentary filmmaker. When he goes to the NYC apartment of the man editing his current film he ... Read More...

2 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: contemporary life, debut, family, literary, Soho Press

When Captain Flint Was Still a Good Man

April 26, 2013

When Captain Flint Was Still a Good Man

  Those of us left behind dug in. Through the fall, through the winter, it seemed we lived on the border of a real life lived elsewhere. It seemed that the absence was ours somehow, not theirs, that we were the ones who were gone.  When Captain Flint Was Still a Good Man is an aptly titled debut that takes place on Loyalty Island, off of Washington State, where the ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, coming-of-age, debut, mystery, Riverhead Books

Dear Lucy: A Novel

April 22, 2013

Dear Lucy

“There are words that I am looking for and when I find those words I will know that they were the words I was looking for, to tell people about the shapes of things inside me.”  As Dear Lucy begins there is a sense that the narrator, Lucy, is a bit off. Her determination to be acknowledged as good and useful is extreme and the lengths to which she goes to be heard become ... Read More...

1 Comment
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, contemporary life, debut, Simon & Schuster

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