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City on Fire

October 21, 2015

city on fire

  If you follow the publishing world then you know that Garth Hallberg was paid 2 million dollars for his debut novel, City on Fire, a story of NYC, wrapped around a wealthy family, an attempted murder, and the blackout of 1977. The Hamilton-Sweeneys are the family, and are as dysfunctional as one would expect in a work of literary fiction. There are secrets, bad ... Read More...

11 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: contemporary life, debut, historical fiction, Knopf, literary, Manhattan

Gold Fame Citrus

October 7, 2015

gold fame citrus

  Nature refused to offer herself to them. The water, the green, the mammalian, the tropical, the semitropical, the leafy, the verdant, the motherloving citrus, all of it was denied them and had been denied them so long that with each day, each project, it became more and more impossible to conceive of a time when it had not been denied them. Gold Fame Citrus opens in ... Read More...

3 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: debut, dystopia, literary, Riverhead Books, science fiction

Under the Udala Trees

October 5, 2015

under the udala trees

  In Under the Udala Trees Ijeoma is only twelve years old when the civil war in Nigeria begins and her mother must leave her behind while she tries to establish a life for them in the north, a safer part of the country. It is 1968 and they live in Biafra, a southern state that has seceded from the nation. The war has already claimed her father and now her mother asks a ... Read More...

6 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: Africa, book clubs, cultural, debut, historical fiction, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, literary, nigeria

Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights

October 2, 2015

two years

  Salman Rushdie is back with Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, a story about the strangeness that resulted from a seam being opened between the world of humans and the world of the supernatural, as embodied by jinns and their female counterparts, jiniri. Of the jiniri there was none more powerful than the Lightning Princess, a spirit who back in the 1100s ... Read More...

2 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: fantasy, literary, magical realism, New York City, Random House

Did You Ever Have a Family

September 21, 2015

did you ever have a family

  If you take a major event and separate out all the people involved in that event—whether responsible for it or impacted by it, you get wildly divergent impressions about what actually happened. This is what author Bill Clegg does so soulfully in his debut novel, Did You Ever Have a Family. June’s daughter Lolly, her daughter’s fiancé, June’s ex-husband, and her ... Read More...

6 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, contemporary fiction, debut, family, literary, Scout Press

Fates and Furies: A Novel

September 14, 2015

fates and furies

Hello, dear Reader! It’s Monday and I know for a lot of you it’s a busy day, getting back into the weekly grind, so if you’re on the run and don’t have time for a full review, here’s what you need to know: read Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies. If you’re a metrics kind of person I’ll make it even easier—I give it 5 stars. Now go. Go and buy it, check it out at the library, ... Read More...

18 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, contemporary fiction, literary, marriage, Riverhead Books

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