70-year slog
~ Mrs. Everything, by Jennifer Weiner ~ This novel has an ambitious goal: to tell the story of a woman from her birth in the 1940s to her death around 2016, and to reflect the events and changing mores of...
Susan
Appalachian Miseries
~ Sugar Run, by Mesha Maren ~ Jailed for life for murder, Jodi is startled to find herself released at the age of 35 after 18 years in prison. She heads straight to southern Georgia to find Ricky, the young...
Tedious gangster fare
~ The Irishman. A Scorsese film. ~ De Niro. Pacino. Pesci. in a Scorsese period-piece film about the Mafia. Sounds like an entertaining way to spend an evening, right? Lauded by critics, nominated for many awards, the film is a...
Predators and Enablers
~ Catch and Kill, by Ronan Farrow ~ This remarkable book outlines and details the investigative journalism that led to the exposure of decades of sexual abuse by Harvey Weinstein, and his eventual arrest. Ronan Farrow’s name and history are...
Anatomy of a Jury
Jill Ciment’s The Body in Question is a difficult novel to categorize, especially at its start. A 52-year old woman in Florida becomes a member of a 6-person jury on a murder case. (Apparently, in Florida, the storied 12-person jury...
Icing on the cake
~ Tender at the Bone, by Ruth Reichl ~ I first came across Ruth Reichl in the early 1990s. We had a small baby and perforce spent much of our time at home, and the New York Times dining section...
Conspicuous but invisible
~ The Book of Unknown Americans, by Cristina Henríquez ~ The title and the first few pages immediately tell you what the author is trying to accomplish here: tell the stories of Americans whose accomplishments rarely get attention, who both...
Tenacious women
~ Traps, by Mackenzie Bezos ~ I must admit I picked up this novel because of the author’s last name. So let’s get that elephant out of the way first. The author married Jeff Bezos, who then went on to...
Cancer Scientist Blues
~ Jim Allison: Breakthrough ~ The backlash against scientific evidence and skepticism about data-driven consensus has reached alarming proportions, the most obvious instances being the anti-vaccination movement and the refusal to accept climate change. Into this atmosphere comes a wonderful...
Competitive Parenting
~ The Gifted School, by Bruce Holsinger ~ Pointed and clever, The Gifted School has a delightfully snarky opening quote: There is something so tantalizing about having a gifted child that some parents will go to almost any lengths to...
Sepia
~ Photograph, directed by Ritesh Batra ~ Ritesh Batra’s Photograph is an extremely delicate film. Set in bustling Mumbai, it has periods of complete stillness, and develops slowly, more like a photograph of yore than anything in today’s frenetic social-media...
Inspector Singh goes to London
~ A Frightfully English Execution, by Shamini Flint ~ It’s tempting to describe Shamini Flint’s Inspector Singh novels as ‘cosy mysteries’. They feature an appealingly crusty detective, and are full of sly humour. Despite their lack of pretentiousness, though, they...
Less could have been More
~ The Clockmaker’s Daughter, by Kate Morton ~ Dense novels with a haunted house at the center are Kate Morton’s niche, and The Clockmaker’s Daughter fits neatly into her genre. But there comes a point where sheer density can drag...
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