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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

Rooms: A Novel

October 10, 2014

rooms

  People, Caroline thought, were like houses. They could open their doors. You could walk through their rooms and touch the objects hidden in their corners. But something—the structure, the wiring, the invisible mechanism that kept the whole thing standing—remained invisible, suggested only by the fact of its existing at all.  Richard Walker has died and the country house ... Read More...

5 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, ecco, literary, mystery, paranormal

How to Build a Girl

September 24, 2014

build a girl

I want to be a self-made woman. I want to conjure myself out of every sparkling, fast-moving thing I can see. I want to be the creator of me. I’m gonna begat myself. Caitlin Moran’s How to Build a Girl is the hell-bent lovechild of Angela’s Ashes and Almost Famous—overlarge, impoverished family with a drunken non-working father and a teen daughter with a love of music and ... Read More...

9 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, Coffee House Press, coming-of-age, debut, Ireland, teen years

Hired Men

August 29, 2014

hired men

Sometimes I end up reading books that are so far out of the genres I usually read it’s refreshing. That’s the case with these two novels about hired men who through their jobs end up in some pretty unusual situations. Both are a quick read and might be good options for the man in your life this Labor Day weekend. Or try them yourself!   Gibson is a rising star in ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: contemporary life, Harper, literary, mini-reviews

The Miniaturist: A Novel

August 25, 2014

miniaturist

Set in 1686 The Miniaturist by debut author Jessie Burton is the spellbinding story of an eighteen-year-old girl married off to an older merchant who lives in Amsterdam. She arrives on his doorstep with no idea of what marriage entails or the fact that she has been procured to enhance his reputation, for her family is poor but with a pedigree. Little does she know that her ... Read More...

16 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: 17th century, book clubs, ecco, historical fiction, Holland, magical realism

The Story Hour

August 18, 2014

story hour

  When it comes to the workings of the human heart there are few who tell tales so consistently unexpected and with such depth as Thrity Umrigar. Her newest novel, The Story Hour, is about the lonely Lakshmi and Maggie, the psychologist assigned to work with her after she tries to kill herself. Lakshmi came from India six years ago with her arranged-marriage husband. Her life ... Read More...

6 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, cultural, Harper, India

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