When I was a pre-teen and even into my early teen years I would go to the local library and, using ‘safe’ magazines like National Geographic as covers, slip issues of the completely unsafe and utterly wicked Cosmopolitan to a quiet spot where I could learn: 3 easy ways to make a man fall for me, why eyeliner is the difference between having a date Saturday night and staying ... Read More...
Cruel Beautiful World
Sometimes a book’s marketing can end up working against it. I found this to be the case with Caroline Leavitt’s Cruel Beautiful World. The synopsis and various blurbs referenced the Manson murders—a real piece of clickbait and yet, aside from being set in the summer of 1969 and the main protagonist’s worry about being left home alone the novel had nothing to do with ... Read More...
The Swans of Fifth Avenue by Melanie Benjamin
Wonderful news, kittens, one of my 5 star, favorite novels of 2016 comes out in paperback tomorrow! The Swans of Fifth Avenue is fabulously divine reading about Truman Capote, 1950s Manhattan and wealthy people behaving badly. Witty and sharp, it is THE antidote for everything that is dreary right now. Once upon a time there was a group of very special ... Read More...
The Girls
I wanted them to like me. Such a simple sentence. Six words, and yet, coming three-fourths of the way through Emma Cline’s debut novel The Girls, they hold the key to the entire novel. They are instantly recognizable to any woman with a memory of her teenage years and they define fourteen-year-old Evie Boyd, the novel’s narrator. But as simple as they are they are also ... Read More...
Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty
It seems like a fairly straightforward equation: a father plus a mother plus three children equals happiness, but when the pluses that bind their reality is removed these elements no longer add up and the results are wholly unexpected. In Ramona Ausubel’s new novel Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty the plus is money, lots and lots of it, enough that Fern and Edgar ... Read More...
Miller’s Valley
Miller’s Valley is both the title and location of Anna Quindlen’s new novel. It is a tiny community where Mimi Miller’s family has owned and farmed their land for hundreds of years. Now it’s under threat because the government has decided to use a dam they put in decades ago to divert the river, flooding the town and turning it into a reservoir and a source of hydroelectricity. ... Read More...
