I adored Maggie O’Farrell’s last novel, Hamnet. She returns, with another novel set in the 1500s, but in Italy this time. The Marriage Portrait is about a young Italian princess and bride, Lucrezia of the famous Medici family, known for its support of key artists and scientists of the Renaissance. The Marriage Portrait is both her story and the name of one of the few portraits ... Read More...
Sirens & Muses: A Novel
The bucolic landscape surrounding Wrynn College of Art a private, elite school in New England disguises an atmosphere of intensity in Antonia Angress’ novel, Sirens & Muses. Louisa and Karina are sophomores and roommates, but that’s where their surface commonality ends. Louisa is from New Orleans and can only afford school through loans and part-time jobs. Karina is from ... Read More...
Calling for a Blanket Dance
In a desperate attempt to save her marriage, Turtle packs up her 6-month-old son, Ever, finds her drunk husband, Everardo, loads him into the car and leaves Oklahoma for Mexico. Her plan is to reunite Everardo with the mother he hasn’t seen in a decade in the hope she’ll pressure him into living up to his responsibilities. The visit is a welcome one and ignites Everardo’s sense ... Read More...
June Reading Recap
June. What a month. Normally, this is a recap of my reading, but no matter how I try to stick to the subject of books my brain refuses to cooperate. By this time next week we’ll be starting the 2,200 mile trip from Ann Arbor to Seattle. The unending list of what needs to be done before then is one of the things that has me awake at 4am. But that’s not it, I can power through ... Read More...
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World
A Turkish woman lying murdered in a rubbish bin hardly seems like the appropriate subject for a piercingly tender novel about the damage done to innocence in childhood and the bonds of friendship as family, but 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World is a singular work that defies labels. The same is true of the dead woman, Leila, who, at 40 years old, has been a prostitute ... Read More...
Four Treasures of the Sky
From the near-future in The Candy House I read my way through the distant past in Jenny Zhang’s Four Treasures of the Sky. The novel is the story of Daiyu, a young girl in China, kidnapped and smuggled to America in the early 1880s. A government law banning all Chinese from entering America had no impact on the market for beautiful young girls, a world Daiyu is forced into. Not ... Read More...
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- …
- 74
- Next Page »






