What do you need to know about Turtle Alveston beyond her weird name? Well, she knows her way around almost every firearm there is and she eats raw eggs for breakfast. She is fourteen, but while she goes to school she doesn’t talk and is about to be held back from high school. She lives with her father in the woods of Mendocino. These simple facts might sound like ... Read More...
The Golden House by Salman Rushdie
I’m a fan of detail in my fiction. I love it whether it’s literary (Donna Tartt) or historical (Alison Weir, Ken Follett), but when it isn’t specific to the story and is in fact an extrapolation of some minor concept, it can be exhausting. This means I left Salman Rushdie’s The Golden House feeling that the book was 800 pages long when it was actually only 380. Why? ... Read More...
Sing, Unburied, Sing
JoJo lives in Bois, a small town in rural Mississippi, with his Pop and Mam—his mother’s parents, and his little sister, Kayla. His mother, Leonie, is a sometime visitor, but drugs and other past-times mean she’s not around much. His father, Michael? He’s in Parchman prison. And he’s white, which means JoJo has a whole other family that wants nothing to do with him or ... Read More...
Little Fires Everywhere
In her outstanding debut novel, Everything I Never Told You, Celeste Ng delicately exposed the family tragedy that can result from unrealistic expectations and the insecurity of trying to fit into a new culture. In her newest novel, Little Fires Everywhere, the Richardson family has no such problem. They are picture postcard perfection, happily sailing through their ... Read More...
Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo
Stay With Me begins in the middle, which is when, after four years of marriage but no children Akin is being pushed by his mother to take another wife. He loves Yejide, but to not have children is incomprehensible in their society and a source of anguish to his wife. When he does give in it is as little as possible, with a woman who he does not allow to live with them and whom ... Read More...
Emma in the Night
Apparently, I’ve moved from dystopian novels this summer to thrillers. On Monday I reviewed See What I Have Done a novel about Lizzie Borden, which I found fascinating more for its bizarre family dynamics than the actual murders. Now I’m back with Emma in the Night by Wendy Walker, a contemporary novel with a family that makes the Bordens look like the Brady Bunch. ... Read More...
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 36
- 37
- 38
- 39
- 40
- …
- 60
- Next Page »






