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The Arsonists’ City by Hala Alyan

March 15, 2021

arsonists

From the nucleus of one family, The Arsonists’ City is a novel that spins out between decades and countries. Idris and Mazna met in the 1970s. He lived in Beirut and was studying to be a doctor and she was a young actress living with her family in Damascus. Decades later they are settled in America with three grown children. The death of Idris’s father means he’s inherited the ... Read More...

3 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, cultural, literary, Middle East

The Northern Reach: A Novel

March 8, 2021

northern

Another Monday and I’m back with a second 5-star fabulous book. W. S. Winslow’s debut novel, The Northern Reach, is a compact novel, set on the northern coast of Maine in the kind of small towns that depend on summer vacationers and fishing for their survival. What begins with one mother mired in grief over a son lost at sea ebbs and flows over three generations of families as ... Read More...

4 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, debut, literary, New England

We Run the Tides

February 24, 2021

tides

I'm not sure it's an actual publishing trend for 2021, but it's fairly unusual for me to read three novels on the same subject in one year. In this case, it's private girls' schools—always fascinating to me, but to the general public? I guess so. In January, there was The Divines and this month, All Girls. The final novel in this trifecta is today’s review: We Run the Tides by ... Read More...

2 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: contemporary life, friendship, literary, San Francisco

A Thousand Ships: A Novel

February 22, 2021

thousand

Happy Monday! I don’t often say that because, well…Monday, but today I’m back with a novel that kept me captivated.  A Thousand Ships is Natalie Haynes’s retelling of the Trojan War or, more specifically, the immediate aftermath of the war. Not exactly new territory, as any number of writers have memorialized this greatest battle of Greek mythology, except Haynes chooses a ... Read More...

2 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: literary, mythology

All Girls: A Novel by Emily Layden

February 17, 2021

girls

Sometimes a book’s title is all you need to know about the book. This is clearly the case in Emily Layden’s debut novel, All Girls. Set at the Atwater School, a prestigious girls’ boarding school in New England, the novel has a provocative beginning. As girls and their families drive to the school for the start of fall semester they see hundreds of yard signs along the way ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, debut, literary

Zorrie by Laird Hunt

February 15, 2021

underrated

Towards the end of last year, the only reading that worked for me was fast paced thrillers. More plot, more action, less literary. This year is taking a turn (or a return) to the fiction that’s always drawn me in, the kind where the words matter more than anything else. Laird Hunt’s latest, Zorrie, epitomizes this style; the power of simplicity. Zorrie is a young girl in ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, historical fiction, literary

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