Where to begin about Killing Commendatore? This chunkster of a book is about a portrait artist who breaks with his current life after his wife leaves him. He moves into a remote home that allows him a quiet life away from his work. Until, he discovers a hidden painting in the attic and a man offers him an astronomical sum to paint his portrait. He agrees and a tenuous ... Read More...
It’s Monday, April 3rd: What Are You Reading?
Another month, another Monday. I’m happy to report that we are going to be exploding into bloom any minute now in Seattle. Certain trees are already flowering but the narcissus, tulips and irises have all made their way towards the sun (when it spears) and look to be ready to explode. In the same way, I have high hopes for my reading in April and May. This month I’m ... Read More...
Green Island: A Novel
Past, present, and future too swirl together, distinguishable but not delineated by any sort of grammar beyond the one our hearts impose. The narrator in Green Island is born on the night in 1947 when the tension between the factions in Taiwan explode into civil violence. Her father, a doctor, in attending a community meeting the next night and quietly asking ... Read More...
Hunters in the Dark
Lawrence Osborne was a travel journalist and currently lives in Bangkok, but his latest novel Hunters in the Dark is not one that will inspire readers to head to Southeast Asia. Instead, it has a Heart of Darkness feel—where the language spoken by the natives is not one that can ever be learned by foreigners and behind nods and smiles is a deep-seated, unforgiving ... Read More...
The Expatriates
The Expatriates is Janice Y. K. Lee’s new novel about three American women living in Hong Kong: Margaret, a married mother of small children; Hilary, a corporate wife who longs for a baby, and Mercy, a recent college graduate. While each embodies a different phase of life they are on equal footing, living in a city where they don’t belong and where they are unlikely to stay ... Read More...
The Sympathizer: A Novel
So it was that we soaped ourselves in sadness and we rinsed ourselves with hope, and for all that we believed almost every rumor we heard, almost all of us refused to believe that our nation was dead. It is only fitting that the narrator in The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s debut novel, is never named. He is a Communist spy, a man who has spent his entire life turned inside ... Read More...
