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 down the Mississippi in a book that is...
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 The Lincoln Highway were both lovely pieces of historical fiction. They have...
The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club is Helen Simonson’s third novel. Her 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...
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 response from a reviewer: The novel is finely crafted,...
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 Lives Matter movement. Some parts of the Indian-American community stayed out of...
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...
The Dog of the North caught my eye entirely because of its title. Was this a Jack London-ish adventure novel in the Yukon? Or was this slang for something entirely different? In fact, the title turns out to be the...
A Town Like Alice drifted across my library page, and having heard it was Australian author Nevil Shute’s most famous book, I thought I should give it a shot. Structurally, the book is a clunker. It’s framed around a solicitor’s...
Barbara Kingsolver is the well-deserved recipient of many literary prizes. Her more recent novels have been impressive stand-alones, but I’m among the many readers who also love and re-read her original trilogy set in Arizona. The Bean Trees and Pigs...
It is always a pleasure to open a book by an accomplished, confident author, and Zadie Smith is one of those. Her first novel White Teeth was a rollicking tale about a Bangladeshi immigrant and his English friend, and her...
Frank McCourt had been telling his stories for decades in New York bars before he wrote his first book. I imagine that his audience always egged him on, because McCourt is a natural raconteur. Born in America and brought up...
Historical fiction can be tricky. On the one hand, the author needs to aim for historical accuracy, including the less appealing social and cultural aspects of the time. On the other hand, the author might not want to associate himself...
That quintessentially American icon, the suburban shopping mall, is at the center of this quiet and pleasing debut novel. This particular mall, in a small town in Pennsylvania, is dying, and only a few shops are still open, with the...
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