The Communist takeover of Saigon forces Nguyễn An Tinh and her family to leave behind their luxurious life and escape to a refugee camp in Malaysia. From there the family immigrates to Canada and settles in Quebec. Kim Thúy’s novel is called Ru, meaning ‘lullaby’ in Vietnamese, which aptly describes the book’s style of storytelling and reminiscence. It is a slim volume with ... Read More...
Beside the Sea
Two young boys journey with their mother to see the ocean for the first time and have an adventure. Unfortunately, nothing is as planned and the trip is not what it seems. For their mother, finding herself out of sync with the world is not unusual, even regarding something as straightforward as sleep. …we’d suddenly find it was the next morning, like other people do, the ones ... Read More...
Sweet Tooth
Sweet Tooth is about Serena Frome, a pretty girl with a mind for math and love for reading. Raised in a quiet town and religious family her childhood is unremarkable. As she prepares for university she wants to study English but her determined mother decides that there will be nothing so fluffy as English in her daughter’s future but that she will study math and go on to a ... Read More...
The Weight of Temptation
Marina Rubin is overweight by about 65 pounds. She has reached the point well past doctors, diet plans, and pills, and is ready for extreme measures, so she signs up for 3 months at a weight loss clinic. It’s a retreat called The Reeds run by a man known only as Professor. In exchange for paying enormous sums of money, obese people like Marina are treated to psychological abuse ... Read More...
Back to Blood
Religion is dying…but everybody still has to believe in something. It would be intolerable—you couldn’t stand it—to finally have to say to yourself, “Why keep pretending? I’m nothing but a random atom…” So, my people, that leaves only our blood, the bloodlines that course through our very bodies to unite us. All people everywhere, you have no choice but—Back to blood! In ... Read More...
The Art Forger
The 1990 theft of thirteen painting from the Gardner museum in Boston is still one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in the art world. Despite the seeming ineptitude of the two thieves, a massive manhunt and a $5 million reward, the works have never been recovered. B.A. Shapiro uses this theft as the background for her new book The Art Forger. Claire Roth is a talented artist ... Read More...
