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A Door in the Earth

September 20, 2019

door

Parveen is like most young women her age—graduating college, but not sure what she wants to do with her degree in medical anthropology. Until she reads a memoir, written by a man who goes to Afghanistan and after a traumatic incident that left a woman dead from giving birth, founds and funds a women’s health center in a small isolated village. Parveen is Afghan-American and ... Read More...

2 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: coming-of-age, contemporary life, cultural, literary, Little Brown and Company, Middle East, war

The Grammarians by Cathleen Schine

September 17, 2019

grammarians

The Grammarians is the story of identical twins Laurel and Daphne. They’re pretty, with deep auburn hair, and precocious—speaking in full sentences and reading by the time they’re five. They were born seventeen minutes apart, with Laurel being older. Daphne’s feelings about this is one of the first indicators of their unusual bond “You were alive for seventeen minutes ... Read More...

14 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: family, literary, Sarah Crichton

The Reckless Oath We Made

September 11, 2019

reckless oath

Zee’s life has never been easy (to begin with, her full name is Zhorzha), but now it’s coming completely unraveled. She left her last worthless boyfriend after she crashed his motorcycle and broke her hip, she traffics marijuana because she lost her job after the accident, and she’s living with her sister LaReigne and her young son, Marcus. Her mother is morbidly obese and a ... Read More...

8 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: contemporary life, literary, Midwest, Putnam

gods with a little g

August 16, 2019

gods

On Monday, I reviewed a novel centered around the lives of two ministers, but it was not a book focused on organized religion. Today’s novel, gods with a little g, is the opposite, with religion at the center of everything in Rosary, California. An oil refinery town that has proudly merged church and state, to the point of cutting itself off from the nearest neighboring city, ... Read More...

2 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: California, coming-of-age, contemporary life, Farrar Straus Giroux, literary

The Dearly Beloved

August 12, 2019

dearly

Charles and James work side by side. Literally. They’re both ministers at a NYC church. Their wives, Lily and Nan, do not share the same closeness. Nan is involved in the church, but Lily wants nothing to do with religion. These are the four people at the very heart of Cara Wall’s luminous debut, The Dearly Beloved. How they came to their faith (or not), how they ended up ... Read More...

10 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, debut, literary, marriage, Simon & Schuster

Tomato Girl by Jayne Pupek

August 9, 2019

tomato

Ellie’s life has never been what you’d call normal. Her mother is unusually high strung, enough so that having people over to the house or going out as a family is not feasible. But her father is the best father in the world. He works in the general store nearby and 11-year-old Ellie goes by every day after school to help him. When her mother gets pregnant everyone is happy. ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: Algonquin Books, childhood, coming-of-age, debut, literary, Southern life

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