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The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street

June 27, 2014

ice cream queen

Lillian Dunkle, the Ice Cream Queen of America, lives in a Park Avenue apartment and has a home in Bedford but began life as Malka Treynovsky in Vishnev, Russia. Susan Jane Gilman’s new novel, The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street, opens in 1913 when, at age six Malka came to America with her parents and her three sisters and ended up in an Orchard Street tenement. Shortly ... Read More...

3 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: 20th century, book clubs, family saga, Grand Central Publishing, historical fiction, Manhattan

Everything I Never Told You

June 25, 2014

favorite debuts of 2014

Celeste Ng’s debut novel Everything I Never Told You is the story of the Lee family. They live in Ohio where the father James is a professor and wife Marilyn stays at home and raises Nathan, Lydia, and Hannah. This is the Rockwell painting version but within those broad strokes there is the kernel, the seed that determines how this story will grow. The source is the very love ... Read More...

7 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, debut, literary, mystery, Penguin

Mambo in Chinatown

June 23, 2014

mambo in chinatown

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...

6 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, cultural, Riverhead Books

Euphoria: A Novel

June 18, 2014

euphoria

It’s that moment about two months in, when you think you’ve finally got a handle on the place. Suddenly it feels within your grasp. It’s a delusion—you’ve only been there eight weeks—and it’s followed by the complete despair of ever understanding anything. But at that moment the place feels entirely yours. It’s the briefest purest euphoria —Nell   We meet Fen and Nell as they ... Read More...

3 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: 1930s, Atlantic Monthly Press, book clubs, historical fiction, literary

Above the East China Sea

June 16, 2014

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 island in the 1940s when ... Read More...

6 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, cultural, historical fiction, Knopf, literary, WWII

The Vacationers

June 11, 2014

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...

4 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, contemporary fiction, family, Riverhead Books

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