Parents expecting identical twins often decide to get whimsical with their children’s names and Marlon and Nadine Antipova are no different. To paraphrase the pretentious Marlon—his daughters would be the beginning and the end, explaining how Ava and Zelda came to get their names. This family story is the only sentimental one found in Caite Dolan-Leach’s mesmerizing ... Read More...
Lincoln in the Bardo
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...
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...
High School Trauma and Drama: Mini-Reviews
There are few people who look back on high school as the best years of their life and, quite frankly, I don’t trust them. These two novels encapsulate what may or may not be the truth of high school life in America today. Is it accurate? Dear God, I hope not, but I’m so far removed from that time that all I can do is share my thoughts on them as novels. Mostly, they made me ... Read More...
Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us
My timing for this review may be a bit off as tomorrow is Thanksgiving, a day of food, but Salt Sugar Fat is not about home cooked meals. Instead, it is a depressing tour of tour of the multitude of ways in which the food industry has duped the American consumer for the last 60 years. Author Michael Moss interviews former food industry executives and studies masses of ... Read More...
Chronicle of a Last Summer
Chronicle of a Last Summer is a small book about a big time in modern Egypt. The novel spans from 1984 to 2014, but only as small chapters in the life of a young woman living with her family in Cairo. In 1984 she is six and her father has recently left, but the reason is never made clear. Even when she is older there never seem to be answers. In this way author Yasmine ... Read More...
