No more regrets for what I haven’t done. Now only regrets for what I have done. I love him, I hate myself. I love myself, I hate him. This is the end of a long story. These are the words of Eleanor (Elle) a 50-year-old, happily married woman who had sex last night with Jonas, her best friend. He’s been in love with her since they were tweens. Their furtive encounter took place ... Read More...
The First Day of Spring
“I am here. I am here. I am here. You will not forget me.” These are the words painted on a wall by 8-year-old Chrissie, a girl so desperate for attention in a world that gives her none that she commits a reprehensible act. She lives alone with her mother and everything, including love, is in short supply. She is starving for the things a child needs to thrive, powerless to ... Read More...
What Comes After
When a novel begins with a shocking act of violence it often indicates more dramatics, more action, to come. In the case of What Comes After, author Joanne Tompkins opts to go a different route, turning the novel inward to the lives of the characters left behind. A small Washington town is rocked when childhood best friends are found dead in a murder-suicide. The murdered ... Read More...
February Reading
What to say about February? Mostly that it felt like the only real month of winter and that’s here in Michigan. For those of you in the South and Pacific Northwest I’m sure it felt like hell. As for reading, it was an interesting month. My reading felt oddly decisive—loved or hated books. There was no middle ground, I either loved or stopped reading a book. The good ... Read More...
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Where to begin with Brit Bennett’s new novel The Vanishing Half? Ostensibly it’s the story of identical twins Stella and Desiree who grow up in Mallard, a small, poor community in the Deep South, comprised solely of light-skinned black people. But given what’s happening in America right now reviewing a book about race feels fraught, even when it’s fiction. As a white woman I ... Read More...
All Adults Here
Astrid Strick is in downtown Clapham where she’s lived for most of her life, when she witnesses a school bus hitting and killing a woman she knows. A tragic death like this could be the focus of most novels, but instead it is the pebble in the pond that creates the widening ripples of life in All Adults Here. We don’t learn much more about Barbara, the dead woman, but she ... Read More...
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