At a time when most teenage girls are busy with dating, hanging out with friends, and choosing colleges, 17-year-old Kiara is facing a rent increase that is likely to render her homeless. She lives in a rundown East Oakland apartment with her older brother Marcus. Their father is dead and their mother is in prison. This is the world explored in Leila Mottley’s gritty debut ... Read More...
Remarkably Bright Creatures
Hello, everyone! I’m easing back in today with a novel that melted my curmudgeonly heart. Remarkably Bright Creatures is a debut by Shelby Van Pelt that takes place in Sowell Bay, a fictional small town in northern Washington State. Tova is an elderly woman, who works nights cleaning the town’s aquarium. It’s quiet work that, on the one hand, suits her wish to avoid prying, but ... Read More...
May Reading Recap
Wait a minute—is May over? I’m pretty sure I was cheated out of a week. Or maybe it’s just that the bad news is coming at a faster pace, whether it’s the increasing attack on women’s rights or the unrelenting uptick in gun violence. I veer between apathy and a rage that wants to know: why doesn’t the government apply the same attention and rigor to young men buying guns as they ... Read More...
An Unlasting Home
When Sara’s mother was 8 months pregnant, she lied to the airlines and flew from Missouri back to Kuwait, determined that her daughter be born in the country of her ancestors. This is just the first of many miles and countries crossed by the indomitable women in Mai Al-Nakib’s sweeping novel, An Unlasting Home. A fitting title for a book populated by women whose lives span ... Read More...
Lessons in Chemistry
It's the 1960s and you’re a brilliant chemist exploring one of the most elusive topics in chemistry—the chemical reaction that led to life. You should be at the forefront of the scientific community. Instead, you’re grappling with your thesis advisor as he tries to rape you and later being called “luscious” by the director of a chemical laboratory where you work. This is ... Read More...
Cover Story: A Novel
It’s a happy Monday—I’ve got an easy 5-star, fun, tear-through novel that I literally started and finished in one day because I couldn’t stop reading. Cover Story, based on the Anna Sorokin scandal, is just that good. In it, a young writer, Lora, finds herself flunking out of NYU just before getting a summer internship at Elle magazine. Once there the entire trajectory of her ... Read More...
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