Just out in paperback, this was a novel I loved and thought deserved a lot more attention. Maybe every monster is a miracle meant to change the world... Author Maria Headley dives into a modern-day retelling of Beowolf beginning with its title, The Mere Wife. This is no novel about a slight wife, a minor presence, a smudge of a life. No, the women in this tale ... Read More...
It’s Not You, It’s Me: Mini-Reviews
Telling you that Christopher J. Yates’s new novel, Grist Mill Road, is about a boy who ties up a girl and shoots her forty-nine times with a BB gun while his friend watches is not a spoiler, because Yates makes it the first page of the novel. It’s simply his way of making sure he’s got your attention. It is also not the crux of the novel. For that he has a ... 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...
Children of the New World: Stories
If this election season isn’t freaking you out enough about the future of America, then you need to read Alexander Weinstein’s short stories, Children of the New World. Thankfully, unlike this election, these stories are not real, but they are brilliant in their take on how we’ll be living in the not-so-distant future. And, depending on your perspective they’ll either ... Read More...
It’s Not You, It’s Me: Mini-Reviews
It happens in personal relationships and it happens with reading: A book simply does not hold my interest, float my boat, whatever metaphor you want to use. But if the writing is good I’m reader enough to admit: It’s Not You, It’s Me. I’ve always been a fan of South Asian authors so approached these novels with high hopes. In both cases the writing was well done, but the ... Read More...
Black Chalk
There are many games to be played in college but none quite like the one designed by Jolyon and his friend Chad in Christopher Yates’s debut novel Black Chalk. The novel, just like the Game itself, begins with innocuous pieces to lure you in—Chad, the shy American determined to make the friends in England that he could not make at home; Jolyon, the funny British boy who ... Read More...
