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The World Without Us

June 22, 2016

  Tess Müller hasn’t spoken in six months. Her mother, Evangeline, pushes a pram around all the time. Her younger sister draws trees and more trees. In most places they would stand out, but in the Australian town of Bidgalong strange is a relative concept. For decades the hills near the town were home to a cultish commune known as The Hive with its alpha male leader ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: Australia, Bloomsbury, family, literary

Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty

June 20, 2016

sons and daughters

  It seems like a fairly straightforward equation: a father plus a mother plus three children equals happiness, but when the pluses that bind their reality is removed these elements no longer add up and the results are wholly unexpected. In Ramona Ausubel’s new novel Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty the plus is money, lots and lots of it, enough that Fern and Edgar ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: 1960s, 1970s, book clubs, family, literary, Riverhead Books

The Summer Guest

June 15, 2016

summer guest

  Zinaida, Katya, and Ana have nothing in common, especially given that Zinaida lived in the small town of Sumy in the Ukraine in the 1800s and Katya and Ana are modern women. But in Alison Anderson’s debut novel, The Summer Guest, their lives intersect as Katya discovers Zinaida’s diary and hires Ana to translate it into English. For all three women this is their chance ... Read More...

5 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: debut, Harper, historical fiction, Russia

Imagine Me Gone

June 7, 2016

imagine me gone

  Imagine Me Gone is a novel of family, characters, beginning with a woman who marries a man she knows has a problem she can’t fix or help him overcome. In 1963 Margaret marries John, despite his having been hospitalized for a severe depressive episode shortly before their marriage. With prose that is wondrously intelligent, funny and painful Adam Haslett traverses one ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, family, literary, Little Brown and Company, mental health

Sweetbitter

May 30, 2016

sweetbitter

  “You know what I dislike? When people use the future as a consolation for the present.”   Tess arrives in NYC in the summer of 2006 from somewhere, but it doesn't matter where because as far as she is concerned she didn't exist before passing through the tollbooth onto the island of Manhattan. And we shouldn't care either, which we don't, because in short ... Read More...

16 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, coming-of-age, contemporary fiction, debut, Knopf, literary, New York City, restaurants

Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg

May 25, 2016

did you ever

Bill Clegg's Did You Ever Have a Family was one of my favorite debuts for 2015. It came out last week in paperback so if you missed it last year you need to get after it now. A wonderful novel that lends itself to book club/reading group discussions.   If you take a major event and separate out all the people involved in that event—whether responsible for it or ... Read More...

3 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: contemporary fiction, family, Scout Press

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