Algonquin Books Archives - The Gilmore Guide to Books

The Mountains Sing

Catherine — Mon, 16 Mar 2020 04:16:27 +0000

If our stories survive, we will not die, even when our bodies are no longer here on this earth. Hương and her grandmother live alone in Hanoi until they are told to evacuate and move to a remote mountain village for their safety. It’s the 1970s and the midst of the Vietnam War. Hương’s parents […]

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Tomato Girl by Jayne Pupek

Catherine — Fri, 09 Aug 2019 07:45:38 +0000

Ellie’s life has never been what you’d call normal. Her mother is unusually high strung, enough so that having people over to the house or going out as a family is not feasible. But her father is the best father in the world. He works in the general store nearby and 11-year-old Ellie goes by […]

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The Van Apfel Girls are Gone

Catherine — Wed, 26 Jun 2019 07:23:17 +0000

I’ve recently learned something about my reading taste—which is kind of awesome after seven years of writing reviews. Here it is: I enjoy ambiguity but not in anything purported to have a mystery component. I can be even more specific. If young girls disappearing are the principle premise of the story, then I need to […]

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A People’s History of Heaven

Catherine — Mon, 18 Mar 2019 07:54:22 +0000

It’s funny, being a girl. That thing that’s supposed to push you down, defeat you, shove you back, back, and further back still? Turn it the right way, and it’ll push you forward instead. A People’s History of Heaven was one of my winter picks. It’s set in a 30-year-old slum called Heaven in Bangalore, […]

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Sugar Run by Mesha Maren

Catherine — Mon, 11 Feb 2019 08:48:55 +0000

Jodi has dealt with feeling unwanted and out of place for most of her life. As a little girl her parents decided she was best off being raised by her grandmother on a remote farm in the Appalachians of West Virginia. Later, as a teen she fell deeply in love with a woman who had […]

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The Current by Tim Johnston

Catherine — Wed, 23 Jan 2019 08:43:18 +0000

What begins as a novel about a car going into a frigid river and only one of the occupants making it out alive turns into a multi-layered story about a small Minnesota town and how the past doesn’t always stay in the past. Audrey is the girl who survives the crash that killed her friend, […]

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Descent by Tim Johnston

Catherine — Mon, 21 Jan 2019 08:47:22 +0000

All her life 18-year-old Caitlin has been a runner. It is who she is and in running she moves in a world of her heart, her blood, her muscles—all working in sync to do what she loves to do. How then could something at the core of her being that brings her such joy lead […]

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The Collector’s Apprentice: A Novel

Catherine — Wed, 24 Oct 2018 07:47:17 +0000

Before I share my thoughts on The Collector’s Apprentice, B.A. Shapiro’s new art world novel, I need to fess up that this books contains two big pieces of literary kryptonite for me. One is kind of obvious—the cover. I love the era of well-dressed, elegant women in pearls, even if I spend 95% of my days in what […]

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An American Marriage: A Novel

Catherine — Mon, 26 Feb 2018 08:02:09 +0000

Where are you left when you’ve been married for less than two years and your husband is sent to prison for a crime he didn’t commit? This is the weighty premise of Tayari Jones’s new novel, An American Marriage. Celestial and Roy are a young couple on their way in Atlanta. She is an artist […]

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The Second Mrs Hockaday

Catherine — Mon, 09 Jan 2017 08:20:26 +0000

Placidia is seventeen when she meets Major Hockaday and when he proposes that very same day she says yes. That he is a widower and has a small son makes little difference to her. It’s 1865 and given the war there’s no point in waiting for a proper courtship and wedding. In fact, the […]

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