The Light in the Ruins, Chris Bohjalian’s latest novel, is set at the Villa Chimera in Tuscany in 1943, a pastoral estate where the war is largely unseen. The Rosatis are a titled Italian family and while they have one son preparing for the Allied invasion in Sicily and another who works at a museum trying to control the flow of Italian art out of the country, their lives ... Read More...
The Shining Girls
There was a lot of buzz at Book Expo America about Lauren Beukes’s new novel, The Shining Girls, and for good reason. The most often heard synopsis I heard was “Time Traveler’s Wife meets Silence of the Lambs”. If you’re squeamish that may be all you need to know but if you can handle a serial killer who disembowels his victims, Beukes creates a creepy but compelling ... Read More...
Dark: The Angel’s Game
If you love to read then there is likely to be a time in which you find yourself reading a string of books that follow a similar theme or contain a singular element. A literary synchronicity, if you will. For me, this occurred several months ago and the reviews posted this week are of that time. The unintentional theme was darkness. Each of these three books is well written, ... Read More...
Is This Tomorrow
In 1956 there was plenty to worry about- the Communists and nuclear missiles, but missing children were an anomaly. In Waltham, Massachusetts, the setting for Is This Tomorrow, people didn’t even lock their doors and children moved from one house to another, playing and eating snacks until the call home for dinner. When twelve-year-old Jimmy disappears one afternoon this quiet ... Read More...
Gone Girl
Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl is a New York Times Bestseller. It is out in paperback now and has already been optioned for the screen by 20th Century Fox with a film adaptation to be produced by Reese Witherspoon. It was last summer’s bestseller and somehow, with everything I was reading, I missed it. Since that moment I’ve been on library holding lists waiting for it. It ... Read More...
Swimming at Night
By page three of Swimming at Night we have already learned of the death of Katie Greene’s sister, Mia. From that point onward, there is little opportunity to stop and catch your breath, as author Lucy Clarke neatly propels the action forward in this, her debut novel, where the mysteries pile up almost immediately. Mia was in Bali, not a country she was supposed to be in, and ... Read More...
