The novel opens with a dinner party hosted by Robyn and Cat, for 3 other couples: Robyn’s old friend, Willa, and her somewhat obnoxious boyfriend; Robyn’s beloved and nerdy brother Michael and his fascinating girlfriend, Liv; and Cat’s brother, Nate...
Rowell is known as a children and/or YA writer, and indeed, I had enjoyed some of her books for young adults, such as Landline, Eleanor and Park, and Fangirl. Rowell’s gift for invoking the awkwardness and exploratory, experimental time of teenagehood...
Autofiction — lightly anonymized fiction based on the author’s own life experience — has been very popular lately, with a host of young writers exploring that genre. As a smattering of examples reviewed in this blog, there’s Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie...
The book is well titled, set as it is at the US-Mexico border, depicting the lives of the Lopez family whose circumstances and opportunities are determined by the border to no little extent. We first meet our protagonist, Ramon, as...
The general plot of a thriller involving terrorists is well known: the terrorists have an gruesome scheme in the works while an FBI/CIA/MI5 agent races to uncover the plan and capture the terrorists before their horrific plan is executed. In...
To my delight, this book really is a lot about butter! As a butter-lover, this is a joy, after the tyranny of margarine. The mystery woman of the book states categorically in our first encounter of her, But there are...
Two major events were happening in Scotland in 1843: one religious, and one agricultural. On the religious front, a bitter schism erupted in the Church of Scotland, where evangelicals fiercely opposed control of the church by landowners split off to...
This novel will probably stand out in my mind as one of those with the most explicit writing on lesbian sexual intercourse. Some of the descriptions run on for pages, in great detail. It is a novel set in Overijssel,...
The title of this review is a reference to a message sent by President Andrew Jackson to the Choctaws and Chickasaw Indians in the 1830s indicating that, as a friend, he planned to move their people to the Trans-Mississippi West,...
This novel set in a small village in Scotland, Kilgoyne, featuring the protagonist, Majorie Crowe, whom the villagers think is between 60 and 70 years of age, “They think me to divorced or a lifelong spinster, that I used to...
There have been so many Japanese books in translation available of recent years that I have ended up reading a good many myself, such as Sayata Murata’s Convenience Store Woman, Meiko Kawakami’s Breast and Eggs, Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s series of Before...
Nayantara Roy’s debut novel is a nicely complex addition to the Indo-American fiction genre. Her protagonist, Lila De, was born in Kolkata and lived there until she was 16, when she moved to America to join her father and stepmother...
Being a lover of marmalade, this title and its glorious front cover of 9 marmalade pots intrigued me. The story is of the fictional descendants of John Keiller, of Dundee Marmalade fame. As any marmalade eater will know, marmalade is...
Everything can be beautiful with the right eyes and ears. Every genre of music. Every sorrow and every pleasure. Every inhale and exhale. Every guitar solo. Every voice. Every plant beside the tarmac. If you find the above sentiment moving...
Here is yet another example of a writer who produced a stunningly good debut novel (Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand), and whose 2nd (The Summer Before the War) and now 3rd novel have been somewhat disappointing subsequently. There are of course many...
Jazz City by the Bay
Part of a Whole
Evolving Friendships
Outsidership, through the prism of friendship
Survival and Resilience
What’s it like, being different? “People decide what you’re like before they even get to know you.”
Unsurprising mysteries: the past of a rich celebrity
Missing on the Tube
Virtuoso Storytelling
Cross-cultural Chasm
Recent Comments