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An American Marriage: A Novel

February 26, 2018

american

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 and he is in marketing, they have a nice home and right up until they go to Louisiana to ... Read More...

2 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: Algonquin Books, book clubs, contemporary life, marriage, racism, social issues, Southern life

Self-Portrait with Boy: A Novel

February 23, 2018

self-portrait

  A startlingly unique and uncomfortable premise is at the heart of Self-Portrait with Boy: an artist is in the midst of taking a series of self-portraits against a window of her apartment when she hears a commotion and learns that the 9-year-old son of her upstairs neighbors, has fallen to his death from the roof. When she develops her film, she discovers one of the ... Read More...

1 Comment
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: art, contemporary life, debut, literary, Scribner

Mrs. by Caitlin Macy

February 21, 2018

mrs

I’m not ashamed to admit that one of my go-to genres is Wealthy People Behaving Badly. There is just something about reading (or watching) people with stupid amounts of money acting foolish and, hopefully, getting caught doing it. It’s the small, petty part of my psyche, but I own it. When I read the synopsis for Caitlin Macy’s new novel Mrs. I thought I’d struck gold. ... Read More...

8 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: contemporary life, Little Brown and Company, Manhattan, marriage

The Transition by Luke Kennard

January 15, 2018

transition

What if you had broken the law and rather than being sent to prison you could opt into a program that would make you a better person? The upside is it’s not prison, you get to keep your job, you have no living expenses, and when you’re finished after six months you’ll be provided with a down payment on a new home and will be on your way to personal and profession success. The ... Read More...

9 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: contemporary life, debut, Farrar Straus Giroux, marriage

It’s Not You, It’s Me: Mini-Reviews

January 12, 2018

you

    Telling you that Christopher J. Yates’s new novel, Grist Mill Road, is about a boy who ties up a girl and shoots her forty-nine times with a BB gun while his friend watches is not a spoiler, because Yates makes it the first page of the novel. It’s simply his way of making sure he’s got your attention. It is also not the crux of the novel. For that he has a ... Read More...

9 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Feature Tagged: contemporary life, Harper, mini-reviews, mystery, Picador

This Is How It Always Is

October 16, 2017

always

  Taming what was scary not by hiding it, not by blocking it or burying it, not by keeping it secret, but by reminding themselves, and everyone else, to choose love, choose openness, to think and be calm. That there were more ways than just two, wider possibilities than hidden or betrayed, stalled or brokenhearted, male or female, right or wrong. Middle ways. Ways ... Read More...

12 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, childhood, contemporary life, family, social issues

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