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Let Me Be Frank With You

November 5, 2014

let me be frank

  Frank Bascombe is back in Richard Ford’s Let Me Be Frank With You and I, for one am happy to see him again. Ford’s last novel, The Lay of the Land, covered Bascombe’s travails through his mid-fifties in a way that perfectly encapsulated the middle-age process of fight and accept. In Let Me Be Frank With You, Bascombe moves through four vignettes that are comprised of ... Read More...

1 Comment
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, contemporary fiction, ecco, short stories

The Book of Strange New Things

October 27, 2014

book of strange

  Pastor Peter Leigh is being given the spiritual chance of a lifetime: he’s been chosen to travel billions of miles to a new planet and bring Christianity to its inhabitants. The planet is called Oasis and is managed by a global corporation, USIC. The Book of Strange New Things, the latest novel from Michel Faber, chronicles Peter’s mission and his attempts to stay ... Read More...

8 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, Hogarth, science fiction

A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing

October 22, 2014

girl half formed

  The heart cannot be wrung and wrung. Eimear McBride brings her main character to life with prose so fractured that A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing reads a bit like Clockwork Orange. There is no made-up language, but McBride uses a combination of Magnetic Poetry and Yahtzee to throw out words in random order with punctuation as an afterthought. Abandon any hope for sentence ... Read More...

12 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged: Coffee House Press, contemporary fiction, debut, literary

The Children Act

September 8, 2014

children act

Ian McEwan is one of those authors who can blend matters of life-and-death with everyday issues and give both equal weight. In his newest novel, The Children Act, he displays his skill with his elegant renderings of the life of Fiona Maye, a High Court judge in London. Maye presides in family court over the type of cases that bring out great emotion but she is widely known for ... Read More...

10 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, contemporary life, mystery, Nan A. Talese

Tumbledown: A Novel

September 5, 2014

tumbledown

Tumbledown by Robert Boswell largely takes place at the Onyx Springs Rehabilitation and Therapeutic Center, a residential facility where James Candler is a counselor. Through the novel we meet the individual patients James works with, the other counselors, his boss, his sister and his best friend. The novel is an ensemble piece of fiction in that almost every character has an ... Read More...

Leave a Comment
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: contemporary fiction, Graywolf Press

The Bone Clocks

September 2, 2014

bone clocks

David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks begins in 1984 with sixteen-year-old Holly Sykes running away from home in a fit of rage over her mother’s refusal to let her move in with a man she loves and then finding that man in bed with her best friend. While on the road Holly meets a very old woman who asks her if she will give her refuge if she needs it. She says yes and unknowingly ... Read More...

10 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, dystopia, fantasy, paranormal, Random House

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