Set in the early 1970s The Mysteries by Marisa Silver is about Margaret Ann (Miggy), the only child of Julian and Jean Brenneman. They married in their early 20s so he could avoid the Vietnam War draft and Miggy was born when Jean ran out of birth control pills. Not necessarily an auspicious beginning for a marriage or having children, but they’ve settled into their own version ... Read More...
Betty: A Novel by Tiffany McDaniel
A biracial little girl is the main character and the namesake in Tiffany McDaniel’s shattering novel, Betty. Born in 1954 and raised in Appalachian Ohio, the novel follows her and her five siblings, a Cherokee father, and White mother as their lives are acid-etched with racism from the outside and tragedy from within. The South of the 1950s and 1960s was not known for its ... Read More...
Faye, Faraway: A Novel
I’ll preface this quick review with the fact that I read Faye, Faraway in the week between the Capitol riot and the inauguration. Translate: my brain was in a petulant snit. Nothing worked and my fuse was between short and non-existent. I needed superlative reading. So, while I was displeased with this novel I rated it as almost good, because for anyone looking for easy reading ... Read More...
Tomato Girl by Jayne Pupek
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 every day after school to help him. When her mother gets pregnant everyone is happy. ... Read More...
The Van Apfel Girls are Gone
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 know, for better or worse, what happened to them. Don’t give ... Read More...
The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin
I believe now that certain events are inevitable. Not in a fateful way, for I have never had faith in anything but myself, but in the way of human nature. It seems as if there’s a trend in winter fiction about a parent dying, an absentee parent, and a determined oldest daughter raising their siblings. I noticed it first in Anissa Gray’s The Care and Feeding of ... Read More...
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