In spite of the rest of the world’s perception, small southern towns knew how to tolerate difference. There was always an old queer or old lesbian couple, or a Boo Radley in town. You just had to not be from away, and stay within in the unspoken boundaries, and you would have grown up knowing what those were. Mary Byrd Thornton is the beleaguered, snarky protagonist in Lisa ... Read More...
Everything I Never Told You
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...
Young God: A Novel
Within the first eight pages of Young God, thirteen-year-old Nikki jumps off a cliff into a pool of water below after being dared, flirts with her mother’s boyfriend, and then watches her mother die as she attempts the same jump from the cliff. By the end of the second chapter, she has had sex with the boyfriend, stolen his car and his bag of drugs, and moved back into her ... Read More...
May Mini-Reviews
If, like me, you’re not overly involved in politics you’ll read the title of Bridget Siegel’s new novel, Domestic Affairs, and think it is some kind of tell-all fiction like The Nanny Diaries or any of Amy Sohn’s looks at life in upper echelon households. You’d be wrong. It is the story of an idealistic fundraiser, Olivia, who gets the chance to manage the fundraising portion ... Read More...
Ruby: A Novel
Ephram Jennings has been in love with Ruby Bell since they met as children fishing in a lake near their hometown of Liberty, in east Texas. When Ruby returns to Liberty after escaping as a young woman to the high life in New York City, she has lost all the shine that made her a beauty and seems to have no control over her own body, spending nights howling and screaming, ... Read More...
Dear Lucy: A Novel
This wonderful work of magical realism was one of my favorite debuts for 2013. It was just released in paperback this week so if you missed it the first time around here's my review. “There are words that I am looking for and when I find those words I will know that they were the words I was looking for, to tell people about the shapes of things inside ... Read More...
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