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The Maid’s Version

September 6, 2013

Maid's Version

  Daniel Woodrell’s last novel, Winter's Bonewas a contemporary look at a teen’s desperate struggle to save what is left of her family when her drug dealing father skips out on bail. In his latest, The Maid's Version, he returns to the Ozarks but in 1929. He writes of Alma Dunahew, a woman whose mind is so filled with the injuries, insults, and injustices of the past that it ... Read More...

3 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, historical fiction, literary, Little Brown and Company

Night Film

August 19, 2013

Night Film

  Stanislas Cordova is a filmmaker of mythic proportions, his films so dark, so intense they are ultimately given X-ratings and so slip off the main screen to be shown only in random locations at night. His following grows and finally, when he disappears from the world onto his 300 acre estate in the Adirondacks, he achieves a mystical cult-like status. Scott McGrath is a ... Read More...

1 Comment
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, mystery, Random House, suspense

& Sons: A Novel

July 22, 2013

And Sons

David Gilbert’s & Sons is one of the most complex books I’ve read in a long time. By this I mean the plot did not appear until just shy of page 200 and I found most of the main characters to be unsympathetic throughout. For those who must sympathize with literary characters (The Woman Upstairs drama), stop now. If brilliant prose (Reality, already taking on water, capsized ... Read More...

2 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, contemporary life, family saga, Manhattan, Random House

How Should a Person Be?

July 15, 2013

How Should a Person Be

  How Should a Person Be? is the new novel by author Sheila Heti, asking the same question. The novel’s Sheila is an aspiring playwright trying to find her place in the world. It’s her belief that everyone around her already knows how to be and so does not struggle the way she does. Initially, she believes fame is what she wants but on her own terms. By a simple life, I ... Read More...

1 Comment
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, contemporary life, literary, Picador

Darker: The Orphan Master’s Son

May 29, 2013

The Orphan Master's Son

By its very nature dystopian fiction is dark but Pulitzer Prize winning The Orphan Master’s Son is not technically dystopian. It is set in North Korea, which exists (as we are all too aware recently) and yet the events and lives of the characters are fantastical in their danger, impoverishment, and deprivation. The protagonist is Jun Do, a boy whose mother died when he was ... Read More...

2 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, contemporary life, cultural, North Korea, Pulitzer Prize

The Interestings

April 10, 2013

The Interestings

  At a summer camp called Spirit-in-the-Woods, a group of six teens is brought together. For five it is a return to a paradise they’ve known in past summers but for Julie Jacobson, a scholarship student, it is a trip to a new world, far from her dreary prosaic life in a small town. Spirit-in-the-Woods is an arts camp and each of the students is considered to have artistic ... Read More...

2 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, literary, Manhattan, marriage, Riverhead Books

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