There is always some fact in fiction but in The Jaguar’s Children by John Vaillant there is likely to be much more than expected. The story is a simple one in terms of characters and staging because it takes place inside a water tanker truck over the course of three days when it is left in the desert near Nogales, Arizona after stopping due to mechanical problems. The ... Read More...
Wonderland
In fact, I was in wonderland then, but only in some hazy amber of memory. At the time, I wasn’t anywhere. I was reaching for the train as it disappeared, flash of silver, around a curve. Now I’m trying to go back to a place I’ve never been. Anna is a rock star. Not the classic variety but the indie variety. On her way to the top, with a record deal in hand and three albums ... Read More...
Visible City: A Novel
In Visible City author Tova Mirvis takes on two of the most socially polarizing groups in America today—mommies and not-mommies. Both groups feel themselves to be ignored and misunderstood and both groups can count on staunch supporters. In the children-need-discipline group is Claudia, an architectural historian who is being auditorially assaulted on all sides. Immediately ... Read More...
The Lion Seeker
The son of Lithuanian Jews who left the country in the 1920s and moved to South Africa, Isaac Helger grows up believing the only way to have self-worth is through money. “Working” for a living, as his watch repairman father does, is embarrassing. As the protagonist in Kenneth Bonert’s novel, The Lion Seeker, Isaac embraces his mother’s credo of “Are you a stupid or a ... Read More...
Want Not
In his new novel, Want Not, author Jonathan Miles explores the concept of wanting in contemporary American society. The story moves between the disparate lives of three groups: Elwin Cross, an overweight linguist professor whose wife has recently left him for a chef; Talmadge and Micah, a young freegan couple squatting in a tenement in Manhattan; and Sue, a 9/11 widow, her ... Read More...
Tomorrow There will be Apricots
Tomorrow there will be Apricots is a portrait in sadness, the kind inflicted by others and the kind brought on by self. Lorca is a 14-year-old girl who is trying to gain the attention of her distant mother, who is a chef, and so turns to Victoria, an Iraqi woman who once owned a popular restaurant in the neighborhood and is now offering cooking classes. Her husband has recently ... Read More...
