Happy Any Day Now begins with the approach of Judith Soo Jin Raphael’s fiftieth birthday and in addition to the normal aging nerves, she is dealing with the return of her college love (who dumped her because his blue-blood mother didn’t think she was good enough for their family), the return of her father (who left her and her mother when she was still a little girl), and ... Read More...
Note to Self
While it seems to be a contradiction in terms to describe a novel as both sharp and sluggish, it applies (in the best way) to Alina Simone’s debut, Note to Self. She melds the jagged edge anxiety of an unemployed woman in NYC with the ennui that means getting out of bed is a Herculean task. She woke up in the mornings already exhausted by the possibilities. The woman is ... Read More...
The Woman Upstairs
We’re the quiet woman at the end of the third-floor hallway, whose trash is always tidy, who smiles brightly in the stairwell with a cheerful greeting, and who, from behind closed doors, never makes a sound. In our lives of quiet desperation, the woman upstairs is who we are, with or without a goddamn tabby or pesky lolloping Labrador, and not a soul registers that we are ... Read More...
Autobiography of Us
For all my careful work I had never learned to mask the dread I felt at every turn…fear that any of one of my many failings would be discovered and I would be sent, like an orphan from one of my childhood novels, back to the dull world I’d inhabited before Alex came along. Rebecca and Alexandra meet in high school when Alexandra is the new girl. Despite being ... Read More...
Gossip
I’m fairly certain that Tolstoy spent less time on War & Peace then I have spent trying to review Gossip. My problem is this: on the surface you have a cool-toned, witty look at three women living in the upper echelon of New York society. They are each interesting, diverse women, wearing fabulous clothes, and if that’s all you need from a book, then stop right here and go ... Read More...
The Dovekeepers
I’ve read enough Alice Hoffman to believe that she is one of the world’s best writers about women. Her plots may be fantastical but even as her female characters behave in magical and mystical ways their deepest mystery lies in their female essence. Imagine then, taking a subject as masculine and obscure as the decimation of the Jews at the siege of Masada- the ... Read More...
