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Dark Fiction: Waiting for Eden

December 3, 2018

waiting

  Much of Elliot Ackerman’s Waiting for Eden takes place in a hospital room. A room where Eden Malcolm has been in a coma for three years. He was a young man so full of life that He treated the whole world, too, like it was a series of cliffs that existed for no other reason than for him to jump off. But now his body below his torso is gone, lost to an IED in Iraq, ... Read More...

13 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, contemporary life, Iraq, Knopf, literary, marriage, war

Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday

February 14, 2018

asymmetry

  Asymmetry is a novel split into three separate and seemingly unrelated parts. I know, sounds like short stories, but there is supposed to be a thread connecting the three. The question is whether I was able to find it or not. The first section is Folly, wherein 27-year-old Alice meets Pulitzer Prize winning author, Ezra Blazer, in Central Park. They talk and after ... Read More...

7 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: contemporary fiction, debut, family, Iraq, literary, Manhattan, relationships, Simon & Schuster

It’s Not You, It’s Me: Mini-Reviews

June 24, 2016

it's

  Happy summer, book lovers! I hope you're all getting to enjoy nice weather, sunshine, and, of course, some great reading. In an effort to help, I'm back with three books that left me thinking It's Not You, It's Me.   If Whitney Terrell’s goal in his novel The Good Lieutenant is to mimic warfare, then he succeeds. The novel opens with the search for ... Read More...

12 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Feature, Fiction Tagged: Atria Books, contemporary fiction, Doubleday, Farrar Straus Giroux, historical fiction, Iraq, London, war

Cara Hoffman- A Letter

April 4, 2014

cara hoffman

By and large this blog is composed of book reviews, author events, anything bookish. I don’t extend myself into the political or economic arenas because I’m not always savvy enough to know what I’m talking about. But sometimes I do raise my head from a book long enough to see something I believe needs to be shared. On Wednesday I reviewed Cara Hoffman’s new novel, Be Safe I ... Read More...

5 Comments
Filed Under: Feature Tagged: authors, Iraq, social issues, war

Be Safe I Love You

April 2, 2014

be safe i love you

Even before she decides to go to Iraq Lauren Clay is fighting a war. A war created by two parents who, for different reasons, are unable to care for her and her nine-year-old brother, Daniel. Instead, Lauren is left, at age 14 to take care of herself, her brother and her father, who lies in bed and cries. Despite having a prodigious talent as a coloratura soprano and having ... Read More...

1 Comment
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, combat, contemporary fiction, Iraq, Simon & Schuster, war

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