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...
The Household Spirit
In The Household Spirit, on a rural road in upstate New York, there sit two identical houses inhabited by two people who are anything but identical. Howie Jeffries is fifty-years old and has lived alone in his house since he and his wife divorced twenty years ago. He is a man with a huge heart wrapped in a persona of extreme shyness and an exterior that is so dour when he does ... Read More...
Midmonth Mini-Reviews
February is more than halfway gone but for the sake of brevity let's just call these midmonth mini-reviews. Three quick hits of books I've read while being waylaid with this season's mega-cold. I hope you're all reading this from a place of warmth and comfort and not the huddled against records levels of snow and below zero temperatures. Her by Harriet Lane: This ... Read More...
Of Things Gone Astray
Magical realism is the moving force behind author Janina Matthewson’s, Of Things Gone Astray, an enchanting novel about the everyday realities of life. In it she follows six different people in London who wake up one day to find that something important in their lives has disappeared. For Mrs. Featherby it is the entire front wall of her house, for Robert his job—literally. His ... Read More...
2 A.M. at The Cat’s Pajamas
Author Marie-Helene Bertino creates an unusual and charming story in 2 A.M. at The Cat’s Pajamas in that while it takes place in the 24 hours before Christmas Eve the only thing Christmas-like about it is that it brings together a disparate group of travelers, all looking for salvation. There is nine-year-old Madeleine; Lorca, the owner of The Cat’s ... Read More...
Belzhar: A Novel
Imagine a small boarding school for “fragile” teens in rural Vermont and within that school an exclusive English class to which only 4 or 5 students are handpicked to join. With this Meg Wolitzer makes her debut in YA fiction. Having read and loved The Interestings, her last adult novel, I knew I had to give Belzhar a try. The school is The Wooden Barn and Jamaica (known as ... Read More...
