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My Dark Vanessa

March 18, 2020

five best

Fiction has always been known for expanding on fact so it’s not surprising that the fiction of the last four years, with all the political and social upheaval, has gotten more and more outsized. Author Kate Russell joins the fray with, My Dark Vanessa, her debut novel about a young woman who has an ongoing relationship with a man that began when she was 15 and he was 42. Not ... Read More...

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

Writers & Lovers by Lily King

March 4, 2020

writers

Everyone knows the writer’s life is not an easy one. For 31-year-old Casey it feels almost impossible. Her mother died suddenly, her boyfriend is gone, she’s working two jobs, and she lives in a space that used to be a potting shed.  She wants to write a novel, but after six years has made little progress. Her friends from college and grad school, many of whom wanted to be ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: contemporary life, Grove Press, literary

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

March 2, 2020

road

You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget. A man and his young son are walking on a desolate road surrounded by burnt trees and ashes. In the distance fires still burn. They are headed…where? To safety would seem to be the answer, but in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road there is no safe place. The world as we know it has gone up in flames. ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, dystopia, horror, literary, Pulitzer Prize, science fiction

A Different Viewpoint: Amnesty

February 26, 2020

amnesty

Last week I reviewed a light, bright novel set in 1950s Sydney, Australia. Today I’m back with another novel set in Sydney, but in recent times and with a much darker tone. Amnesty by Aravind Adiga is about Danny, an illegal immigrant from Sri Lanka. His visa expired three years ago when he dropped out from a for-profit college. He’s been living in the shadows as a cash-only ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, contemporary life, cultural, literary, Scribner, social issues

A Different Viewpoint: Cleanness

February 24, 2020

cleanness

It’s very likely that at some point in our lives we’ve all experienced feelings of loneliness and alienation, but it is unlikely that we’ve been made to feel unnatural or that we have no right to even exist where we are. This is a different viewpoint for me, one I’ll be exploring in my review today and, in a different way, on Wednesday. An American teacher at a school in ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: contemporary life, cultural, Farrar Straus Giroux, literary

Talk to Me: A Novel by John Kenney

February 10, 2020

talk

My end of January and beginning of February reading has been less than exciting as evidenced by my Friday post. I thought rather than write a lukewarm review of book that was only OK, I'd give some renewed attention to a book from 2019 that I thoroughly enjoyed. Talk to Me came out in paperback last week and I'd highly recommend it for timely, entertaining, and thought ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, contemporary life, literary, Putnam, social issues

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