The title of this post might make you think I’m alluding to the dumpster fire that is current American politics, but you’d be wrong. Although the generalized anxiety so many of us are feeling is likely caused by the chaos, I’m only referring to two novels I recently read. Summer might not seem like the time for dystopian reading, but somehow it’s happened to me this summer. ... Read More...
DNF: The Dreaded Did-Not-Finish
Much like the political noise that is sweeping our country right now there is a topic in the bookish world that tends to split itself into party lines. For some it is something they are proud of and shout from the rooftops. For others it is a personal failure and something they’d rather not talk about. I am referring, of course, to the decision not to finish a book or as many ... Read More...
Boo: A Novel
You are thirteen; standing in front of your locker at school one morning and the next thing you know you wake up in an austere white room and are informed you’ve been ‘rebirthed’ into Heaven, although it’s not called Heaven it’s called Town. For most 13-year-olds this would be fairly traumatic but for Oliver, the protagonist in Neil Smith’s Boo it’s not altogether unexpected. ... Read More...
Above the East China Sea
How has he not had it drummed into him that brats don’t whine? We don’t plead. We don’t need. We require nothing. Not even real roots. We’re air ferns. In Sarah Bird's new novel Above the East China Sea the island of Okinawa is the centerpiece of a multi-generational drama that plays out during World War II and modern times. Tamiko is a native of the ... Read More...
Plainsong
From an aerial satellite view one might think Holt, Colorado to be a town so tiny as to be without interest. That would be the case if not for Kent Haruf, who brings this town to quiet, poignant life in the novel Plainsong. There are the McPheron brothers, older farmers who have never married and still live life much as they always have. There is Guthrie, a teacher with two ... Read More...
The Engagements
J. Courtney Sullivan returns, this time turning her insightful eyes to a subject dear to many women’s hearts and one that epitomizes the eternal hope of love, diamonds. In her latest novel, The Engagements, we meet Frances Gerety, the woman who, in the 1950s, created one of the most celebrated slogans of the century: A Diamond is Forever. Frances and her work with DeBeers ... Read More...
