Another Monday and I’m back with a second 5-star fabulous book. W. S. Winslow’s debut novel, The Northern Reach, is a compact novel, set on the northern coast of Maine in the kind of small towns that depend on summer vacationers and fishing for their survival. What begins with one mother mired in grief over a son lost at sea ebbs and flows over three generations of families as ... Read More...
We Wish You Luck
When Hannah, Leslie, and Jimmy arrive at Fielding for the school’s MFA (Masters of Fine Arts) program they don’t know each other. Their backgrounds are wildly different as are the backgrounds of the 14 other people in their class. But in less than two weeks they’ll be bonded together in ways none of them could have imagined. They are the center of Caroline Zancan’s debut novel, ... Read More...
Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout
On Monday I reviewed Olive Kitteridge in preparation for today’s review of Elizabeth Strout’s sequel, Olive, Again. I’ll start by saying these books stand alone. Olive is Olive is Olive. She’s a decade older, her relationship with her son is still virtually non-existent, but there’s a new man in her life. There’s also the tiniest flicker that age is taking the edge off some of ... Read More...
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
Olive Kitteridge is a woman in her 60s, living in a small town in Maine, who has something to say about everyone and most of it is not good. She is also the character at the center of Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same name. Strout is coming out with a sequel, Olive, Again, this fall so I thought I should get to know Olive in the first book. This was ... Read More...
Cygnet by Season Butler
The narrator of Season Butler’s debut novel, Cygnet, is known as the Kid. She’s 17 and her parents have dropped her off at her grandmother’s house on an island off the coast of New Hampshire to live while they try and get their lives together. It’s supposed to be for a few weeks, a month at most, but three months later, the Kid’s grandmother has died and she’s never heard from ... Read More...
Bowlaway by Elizabeth McCracken
It’s the end of the 19th century when Bertha Truitt appears in Salford, Massachussetts. Literally, just appears. If she has a past she doesn’t want to talk about it. What she does want to do is open her own candlepin bowling alley and with the money she has she does. This is just the first of Bertha’s actions that make her the most intriguing character in Elizabeth McCracken’s ... Read More...
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