Witty, somber, irreverent—just a few of the words I’d use to describe George Saunders’s new novel, Lincoln in the Bardo. And because I know you’re wondering: bardo is the Buddhist concept of the interim place the soul goes before moving into its next reincarnation. In this case, the soul belongs to Willie Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln’s eleven-year-old son who dies of ... Read More...
The Shore: A Novel by Sara Taylor
The Shore by Sara Taylor may qualify as one of the most unusually formatted books I’ve read in a long time. Take a family tree composed of over fifty members, stretching from the 1850s to 2143. Close your eyes, throw a dart at the tree and wherever it land--that’s a chapter. So, even though Medora Slater is the matriarch who gets this clan started, she doesn’t make an ... Read More...
Swimming Lessons
When Claire Fuller’s newest novel, Swimming Lessons, begins Ingrid has been missing for eleven years. Her daughters, Nan and Flora, have grown up and her husband Gil now spends most of his time going through the books in their house. He’s always been obsessed with the marginalia and ephemera left behind inside their covers, but now there is something more. Because in ... Read More...
January Reading Wrap-Up
Well, all righty, the first month of 2017 is wrapping up. I’ve already noted that my reading is still in an odd place, but I’m working very hard to get my head and heart back into the game—what’s happening now is going to keep on happening. One very positive thing I did in January was participate in the Women’s March in Seattle. The city had planned for 40,000 people ... Read More...
Girlchild by Tupelo Hassman
Well, well, well…finally, after two months of all-right-but-not-great reading I’ve been knocked off my feet. Not by a new release, but by a 2013 novel from my Goodreads to-read list. I’m not going to quibble; I’m just thrilled to have read something I loved so much that it’s hard to find the best words for it. Tupelo Hassman’s Girlchild is a piercing novel of childhood ... Read More...
Idaho: A Novel by Emily Ruskovich
When a mother brutally murders one of her young children in the first quarter of a novel there is an expectation that the motivation behind the act will be a theme or, maybe, her backstory and how it led to such an act, but in Emily Ruskovich’s debut, Idaho, neither happens. I picked up, put down and tried to re-engage this novel multiple times in the course of several ... Read More...
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