Jean Kwok is back with Mambo in Chinatown, another tenderly crafted novel about the assimilation process for Chinese immigrants in America. This time we’re absorbed into the life of Charlie Wong, a twenty-two year old woman, who, as the novel begins, is working as a dishwasher in a restaurant where her father is the master noodle-maker. When she has the opportunity to take ... Read More...
The Vacationers
The second novel can be a stressful time for any novelist but more so if their first hit it big, as did Emma Straub’s Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures. How marvelous then when the second novel travels (literally) in a completely different direction but still delivers on-point prose and an engaging story. I’m talking about The Vacationers, Straub’s contemporary look at the Post ... Read More...
Hunting and Gathering
For every one of us there is a point when we know we are in love with a book and for each of us it is different. For me, it was page 17 in Hunting and Gathering when the anorexic Camille crumpled up a note from a well-meaning young doctor asking her to call him so he could take her to dinner. One sentence, no special words and yet, to me, it so perfectly encapsulated this ... Read More...
On Such a Full Sea
People often write of singers or actors with such amazing voices it would be a pleasure to listen to them read the phone book. For the written word Chang-rae Lee is such a person. His words and the way he melds sentences are all so quietly beautiful the plot is secondary. He has a voice of astonishing grace and range. This is not to say that his newest novel, On Such a Full ... Read More...
The Signature of All Things
Elizabeth Gilbert is back after her foray into relationships in Eat Pray Love and Committed, with a new work of fiction called The Signature of All Things. The novel is a family saga that spans generations and continents. Gilbert begins with Henry Whittaker, Alma’s father and a man who fell into his field through stealing plant specimens from one of England’s greatest ... Read More...
Sweet Thunder
In Sweet Thunder, Morrie Morgan and his new wife Grace are still on their year-long honeymoon when they get called back to Butte, Montana. A former boss is giving them his home, a grand old mansion. The only caveat is that he, Sam Sandison, is now their tenant in this massive new home. For Morrie, a wandering sort of fellow who won his fortune betting against the White Sox in ... Read More...
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