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The Knockout Queen

April 27, 2020

knockout

Michael and Bunny are the unlikeliest of friends. Polar opposites in almost every way: his mother is in prison so he lives with his aunt, while she lives in a mansion with her father. He is less of a young man than he is supposed to be with long hair, a pierced nose, small and slender. He likes other boys, but no one knows. She is literally too much of a girl. Growing and ... Read More...

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

Pachinko: A Novel

April 20, 2020

pachinko

Historical fiction seems to be the safest bet for my reading right now. Novels that put me in another place, in a different century or even a different decade, all seem to work at distracting my scrabbling brain. Most recently, I fell into the world of Korea from the 1930s to the 1980s in Min Jin Lee’s expansive family saga, Pachinko. It’s four generations of one family as they ... Read More...

4 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: cultural, family saga, historical fiction, Southeast Asia

The Beauty of Your Face

April 15, 2020

beauty

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...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, cultural, debut, literary, racism

Miss Austen: A Novel

April 8, 2020

austen

On Monday I reviewed what was a stunning, but intense book, so it’s with a bit of relief that I’m back with a book I’ll call recovery reading. Cassandra Austen is the older sister of author, Jane Austen. Jane has been dead for many years and Cassandra has felt it was her duty to be the arbiter and controller of her beloved sister’s legacy. To this end, she has been gathering ... Read More...

2 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: 19th century, England, historical fiction

Valentine: A Novel by Elizabeth Wetmore

April 6, 2020

five best

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...

8 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, debut, Harper, literary

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

March 27, 2020

glass hotel

A young woman named Vincent is at the heart of The Glass Hotel, a novel that stretches its plot around the globe and into the world of high finance, hotels, restaurants, and even global oceanic shipping. It’s a complex brew of stories and people who meet, side- step, brush up against, or collide, with each other in ways that mean much more to the big picture than they ... Read More...

6 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: contemporary life, Knopf, literary, mystery

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