Life provides a graceful arc for the fortunate When you’re a teenager, relationships feel exceptionally complicated, something Niru and Meredith learn in in Speak No Evil, the new novel from Uzodinma Iweala. They are seniors at a private school in Washington D.C. where he is a track star and is set to attend Harvard in the fall. She is also a runner, but with a more ... Read More...
It’s Not You, It’s Me: Mini-Reviews
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...
Everybody’s Son: A Novel
When a novel opens during a heat wave with a ten-year-old boy breaking a window to get out of an apartment with no electricity after being left alone for a week while his mother goes out to buy drugs it doesn’t seem as if much nuance to the story can follow. Unless the author is Thrity Umrigar, one of my favorite writers for presenting human emotion at its messy, inconvenient, ... Read More...
It’s Monday, June 5th: What Are You Reading?
In case you didn't know, I’m a big fan of synchronicity. Coincidence is so boring when you can choose to believe that the most random things are part of a greater pattern! So…how awesome is it that my Monday reading is A) one of my favorite authors B) she lives in Cleveland and C) I’M IN CLEVELAND! I know, I’m giddy, too. And in my little rainbow unicorn mind ... Read More...
Commonwealth: A Novel
The Keatings and the Cousins turn into one extended broken family when Mr. Cousins decides to kiss Mrs. Keating at her daughter Franny’s christening. Two divorces and relocation follow and what were two distinct sets of children merge into one unruly tribe in Virginia every summer. This is Ann Patchett’s latest novel, Commonwealth, and it is a story as comforting in its ... Read More...
The Summer Guest
Zinaida, Katya, and Ana have nothing in common, especially given that Zinaida lived in the small town of Sumy in the Ukraine in the 1800s and Katya and Ana are modern women. But in Alison Anderson’s debut novel, The Summer Guest, their lives intersect as Katya discovers Zinaida’s diary and hires Ana to translate it into English. For all three women this is their chance ... Read More...
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