~ Burn Book, by Kara Swisher ~ Simon and Schuster, 2024. Too often, inventors are painted as heroic, with their faults glossed over in our accepted narrative. Most are damaged in a significant way, usually from early in their lives....
~ The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, by Rachel Joyce ~ Random House, 2012. “It is solved by walking” — attributed to St Augustine, circa 400 AD Rachel Joyce’s first novel is one of those quintessentially British, slightly quaint, gentle,...
~ The Great Believers, by Rebecca Makai ~ Penguin, 2018. In 1985, at the beginning of this novel, several young men attend a memorial wake in Chicago. This is not a standard memorial service; it is a party, held at...
~ How to Say Babylon, by Safiya Sinclair ~ Simon & Schuster, 2023. Say the word ‘Rastafarian’, and many people will think of Bob Marley and reggae. Beyond the catchy, unmistakeable rhythm of the songs, few people in America, including...
~ The Limits, by Nell Freudenberger ~ Penguin Random House, 2024. Nell Freudenberger’s Lucky Girls was a wonderful collection of short stories (see Reeta’s review), but it’s a big step from short stories to a full-length novel, and not every...
~ Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books, by Kirsten Miller ~ William Morrow, 2024. A novel not just about libraries or bookstores, but specifically about a Little Free Library! Who could resist? Well, not me at least. Set in...
~ Long Island, by Colm Toibin ~ Simon & Schuster, 2024 When we left Eilis at the end of Colm Toibin’s lovely Brooklyn, she had just departed the small Irish town of Enniscorthy to return to her husband in New...
~ James, by Percival Everett ~ Doubleday, 2024. I said these kinds of things were adventures; but he said he didn’t want no more adventures. Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain. Published 1884 So says Huck Finn during the raft journey...
~ Table for Two, by Amor Towles ~ Penguin Random House, 2024. A full-length novel is very satisfying, but even short stories from such an accomplished author are too tempting to pass up. Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow and...
Helen Simonson’s debut novel, Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, was quite delightful. Her second, The Summer Before the War, had a charming cover but the novel itself did not live up to either its cover or Simonson’s first novel. Has she...
~ Erasure, by Pervical Everett ~ Graywolf Press, 2001 Thelonious Ellison is an academic and a writer of fiction. He is also black, and unfortunately, his books do not conform to the publishing industry’s idea of black writing. A typical...
~ A Great Country, by Shilpi Somaya Gowda ~ Mariner Books, 2024. Over the last few years, many damning reports and videos of police brutality and bias against African-Americans have emerged and been disseminated via the internet, sparking the Black...
Books and movies about sports are abundant, and tend to follow a certain pattern: hero (or more rarely heroine) is unusually talented, faces hurdles, is set back at some point, but eventually triumphs over adversity, winning trophies and learning (and...
Driss Guerraoui dies in a hit-and-run accident in a small California Mojave town. Driss is a Moroccan immigrant, so there are inevitable threads of racism running through his backstory and the investigation of his death, and through the reactions of...
Richard Russo’s trilogy of books set in North Bath, upstate New York, follows the familiar themes of many of his novels: absent fathers, resentful sons, and resulting trauma that continues from generation to generation. His Empire Falls was set in...
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