In Senegal, young boys are often sent from their rural villages to Dakar, a city where they have opportunities for religious and secular education not found at home. Most often it begins when the child is ten, but in the case of seven-year-old Ibrahimah when Marabout Ahmed saves his life, his father, Idrissa, agrees to let the holy man take his son and begin his education ... Read More...
The Charmed Wife: A Novel
When it came out, Olga Grushin’s novel Forty Rooms blew me away. I had never read a piece of fiction that so perfectly encapsulated many of my feelings about marriage and being a woman. It was with great excitement that I saw Grushin was back with a new novel. Actually, excitement and trepidation because the bar would be high and Grushin looked to be mining the same ... Read More...
The Divines: A Novel
Every year there it seems a different theme emerges in fiction. Last year it was twins (The Grammarians, The Vanishing Half, Thin Girls), but this year, although it’s only January, I have three novels in my winter reading that are about girls’ boarding schools. What is it about that subject that entices those of us who were no more likely to attend one than go into outer space? ... Read More...
Winter 2021 Books I’m Ready to Read
New year, new books! As much as I’m ready for things to be different in 2021, there is a change I’m not looking forward to in the book world. A combination of COVID and the economy means publishers have been getting a lot stingier about sending advance copies of books to book bloggers. For the first time in a long time my 2021 winter preview includes books I haven’t received ... Read More...
2020 Underrated Gems
Well, it’s that time of year again…the extravaganza of lists about everything BEST in the world. I’ll be joining the fray, but my two lists (debuts and overall best) won’t be going up until after Christmas. For today, I wanted to give some love to four very different books I thought were gems, but that didn’t get much attention. Interestingly enough, none are light reading. I ... Read More...
The Unraveling of Mercy Louis
Take high school sports, an oil refinery explosion, a grandmother ready for the Rapture, and layer in a fetus found in a dumpster and a Purity Ball and you have the world that is The Unraveling of Mercy Louis. Ostensibly, the novel is about Mercy, a high school senior who is one of the best basketball players in the state of Texas, but the events listed create a vortex of ... Read More...
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