Yesterday was the 69th anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Japan by the United States. Now threats of atomic war loom and fade whenever one country gets mad at another. I wondered about the path we took to making the bomb and this led me to Denise Kiernan’s book The Girls of Atomic City: The untold story of the women who helped win World War II, a highly ... Read More...
Girls Gone Wrong
You spend a long time waiting for life to start—the past year or two filled with all these firsts, everything new and terrifying and significant—and then it does start and you realize it isn’t what you’d expected, or asked for. Megan Abbott excels at portraying the almost overwhelming brew of hormones and perfumes that comes off teenage girls. Where she deviates from more ... Read More...
The Care and Management of Lies
Thea and Kezia have been friends since childhood and have just finished college to begin their teaching careers in The Care and Management of Lies by Jacqueline Winspear. That is until Kezia decides to marry Thea’s brother Tom, leaving Thea feeling isolated and betrayed. While Kezia adapts to married life and being a farmer’s wife, Thea throws herself into the suffragette ... Read More...
Wonderland
In fact, I was in wonderland then, but only in some hazy amber of memory. At the time, I wasn’t anywhere. I was reaching for the train as it disappeared, flash of silver, around a curve. Now I’m trying to go back to a place I’ve never been. Anna is a rock star. Not the classic variety but the indie variety. On her way to the top, with a record deal in hand and three albums ... Read More...
The Pink Suit
The pink suit is both the description of the outfit worn by Jacqueline Kennedy when her husband was assassinated and the name of Nicole Mary Kelby’s new novel, The Pink Suit. The novel traces the history of the infamous suit, but Kelby goes beyond that to seamlessly weave a story behind the facts. Kate is a young Irish immigrant whose sewing is of such high quality that she ... Read More...
Beauty: A Novel
Beauty is Frederick Dillen’s new novel and in it we meet Carol McLean, who spent her teen years helping neighborhood boys find parts for their beat-up cars but grows up to work for a private equity firm that buys companies only to sell their parts. She is the go-to person for these company shut downs, known as an undertaker, for coming in and laying off all staff and ... Read More...
