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...
The Lager Queen of Minnesota
I absolutely loved J. Ryan Stradal’s debut novel, Kitchens of the Great Midwest so was nervous about his second novel. Sophomore efforts can be notoriously underwhelming. Happily, this was not the case with The Lager Queen of Minnesota. The story is about two sisters, Edith and Helen, and the wildly different paths their lives take when Helen reneges on a promise ... Read More...
If You Want to Make God Laugh: A Novel
Delilah hasn’t been home in forty years, but when she arrives on her family’s farm in South Africa it’s to find her sister Ruth drunk on the couch and getting ready to sell the place. The sisters are polar opposites. Literally. Delilah left the family at 17 to become a nun and when that didn’t happen devoted herself to working in an orphanage in Zaire. Ruth became famous as a ... Read More...
Mrs. Everything by Jennifer Weiner
It’s the 1950s and tradition reigns in America. For the most part the Kaufmans fit in. Except for Jo, who’s more interested in sports and playing with the daughter of their maid, both of which cause her mother no end of aggravation. Her younger sister Bethie was their mother’s favorite—pretty, popular, and destined either to marry well or be a star. For Jo, it’s her father who ... Read More...
So Much Life Left Over
Daniel, a young man in his early thirties, manages a tea plantation in Ceylon in the early 1920s. He moved there from England with his wife, Rosie, and daughter Esther, after his friend, another RAF pilot in the Great War, got him the job. It is a new start for them, not just because of the war, but because their marriage is deeply troubled. Daniel hopes that a complete change ... Read More...
Love and Ruin by Paula McLain
It wasn’t bravery when you did what you had to do. Paula McLain’s novel, Circling the Sun, was one of my favorites of 2015, largely because she portrayed Beryl Markham so well as a woman who wasn’t content to follow the norms of her times—get married, have children—but who understood that the only way to follow her own path meant the norms would never be an option. ... Read More...
