The Original: A Novel
by Nell Stevens
Who are you? Who am I (6/18/2025)
As I open the first several pages into the main hall of Inderwick, I have a hard time knowing whether Grace, the copyist (whom we might call a forger) is able to perceive the world further than what she sees on a canvas and then paints. Is her cousin Charles, who has been away for thirteen years, really her cousin or a man pretending to be her cousin? As this delightfully well written book proceeds, we explore what is real and what isn't, and ultimately whether they are that different?
P.S. I don't know if you care about these things but there is a typing error on page 285 (the first new paragraph on the page, the word a is wrongly placed before the word paint instead of after it.)
Raising Hare: A Memoir
by Chloe Dalton
Intimacy (1/6/2025)
From the very first pages of this book, I was captivated by the story of this hare, not only would it survive or what would happen to it, but by the slow motion unfolding of the Chloe Dalton's, the author, experience of what it would mean to pay closer attention to the world we share with all creatures.
In the course of this memoir, I wonder who is the main character whose life we have a deeper understanding, is it the hare or the author? And as the book progresses we see the author as having a breakthrough in her own understanding of the world.
It is a very involving book that I couldn't put down, and though I didn't read it in a 'sitting' still it hovered in my consciousness for the three days I pondered and was enriched by it. I think the lasting effects of this book will be experienced for many years.
Bad Animals: A Novel
by Sarah Braunstein
Bad Animals (1/11/2024)
You don't read this book, you devour it, and like an Ourobourus, it devours you in turn. The many layers of the book (accentuated by deceptions, lies, and betrayals) are like 'bad animals' that sink their claws into you until the very last page. A book almost impossible to put down.
Day: A Novel
by Michael Cunningham
Day (10/11/2023)
This is a a gorgeously written book using the Covid-19 pandemic as a way to talk about how we can figure out who we are in an ever changing world that infiltrates our lives with calamities that we can't control and those that we can. The novel is deliciously claustrophobic, taking us inside the many faceted layers of our lives, our thoughts and feelings about who we are, and the distance between that and the way that we live. It's not an easy book to inhabit because many of the issues that the novel brings forth are unsettling, and yet, for many of us, their experience of the pandemic was not that different from our own lives.
Devil Makes Three: A Novel
by Ben Fountain
Devil Makes Three (9/5/2023)
Devil Makes Three is a riveting detective novel, a thriller with political intrigue, many interwoven love stories and rise and collapse of Haiti after the coup replacing Aristide, the first democratically leader of their country. It's a long involved saga with many layers of chaos, deception, and truth. The novel is a roller coaster ride worth holding on tight. I enjoyed this gorgeous novel about what happens when a democratic country falls apart.
Young Man, Muddled: A Memoir
by Robert Kanigel
Muddled, for sure (5/4/2023)
I want to say one further thing about this book. It was very poorly written. It was an "I did this and this and this etc." without any literate flourishes of language.
After finishing the book, whew, I open the new novel, Complicities, by Stacey D'Erasmo, and in the first paragraph, it was like water to a man dying for something well written.
Young Man, Muddled: A Memoir
by Robert Kanigel
Muddled, for sure (5/4/2023)
Rabert Kanigel's memoir is more a diary than a memoir about a few years in the late 1960's. His audience seems to be himself, remembering times past without much reflection; it covers jobs he took to avoid the draft for fighting in Viet Nam while working for companies involved in producing military equipment. The book follows his trying to make a relationship with his girlfriend Maura work and his trying to figure out what he wants to do with his life, occupationally.
It's a very self-centered book. Hey, I get that it's a memoir, but without reflection, the broader contexts of what was happening in the world and his own personal journey just seem to flatline.
Iron Curtain: A Love Story
by Vesna Goldsworthy
Iron Curtain (1/7/2023)
This gorgeous well-written book will grab your attention from the first several pages and never let go. The compelling story takes you on a journey that you haven't been on before, from a young woman leaving the upper class of Russia to a life she hadn't really anticipated in England. I found the book to be very engaging.
The God of Endings: A Novel
by Jacqueline Holland
The God of Endings (11/5/2022)
What popped into my head as I started getting into this book was the Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times." I had a lot of mixed feelings about this book. For a first novel this woman writes extremely well, but also like many first novels, it's twice as long as it needs to be. Given that the main character, Collette LeSange is immortal, spending so much time of the book detailing her search for the life sustaining elixir of blood seems at the very least ironical. Collette is a lonely soul without many resources to achieve much more than simple survival. Rather than giving us more of a panoramic historical view and sharing that kind of commentary, it's simply a well written book where most of it focuses on survival. I was disappointed. I hope her next novel is better.
Good Husbands: A Novel
by Cate Ray
Good Husbands (3/29/2022)
It was surprising to me that a book, whose premise is that three women who are complete strangers receive a letter in the mail claiming their husbands were involved in sexually assaulting a woman over twenty years ago, and is 400 pages long, could hold my attention. Truth is, once past the first ten pages I couldn't put it down until I finished it. The book completely held my attention.
Two Storm Wood: A Novel
by Philip Gray
Two Storm Wood (12/8/2021)
From the very first pages, I loved every word. It's one of those moments when style and cadence competes with content, or it could be the other way around because the content grabbed me right away and then I noticed how the style complimented my immersion in the story. This was true all the way through this gorgeous story of an English Regiment in World War 1, fighting in France, and Amy Vanneck's search for her fiancee who is described as "missing in action," and what really happened to him.
Never Saw Me Coming: A Novel
by Vera Kurian
What do you think you know for sure? (6/8/2021)
This novel is about a college program that has given free tuition to seven students who are deemed to be psychopaths. They have smart watches which systematically chart their locations and moods. They don't know the other students in the study. The psychologist who has created the program believes he can help these people manage their illness. But when a couple of the students are murdered, the question becomes can a psychopath trust another psychopath. Like many great mysteries, I felt interested on the first page. The book was deliciously engaging, fun even, and I didn't know the murderer until the last few pages. All the winding plot twists made it a very entertaining book that I enjoyed very much.
Palace of the Drowned
by Christine Mangan
Palace of the Drowned (3/4/2021)
This is a gripping novel that teases with knowing what happened but waiting to see if anyone else knows and what the consequences might be. British author Frankie Croy's first novel is met with unabashed success and her lucrative book contract for subsequent novels is not met with similar praise; and her latest novel has one scathing review left unsigned. This review magnifies what Frankie already feels, and like a sliver underneath a toenail, it is painful but without an easy remedy to extract the lingering after effects of this searing criticism.
She retreats to Venice, attempting to find the fire that catapulted her initial rise in the publishing world. While there, she is accosted by a young woman, Gilly, who says that she knows her, or her mother, who is an editor, knows her. This young woman is also a writer and wants to share her manuscript with Frankie, whom she has idolized since her rise in the literary world. Frankie reads it and finds it very modern without much of a narrative, and not wanting to crush this young woman's aspirations, says that it's not really her kind of book. Gilly says, however, that an editor has seen some of it and is going to publish it. And then, life gets very interesting.
From early on in the novel there is an underlying level of tension only increasing as the book progresses to the point where you can't put the book down until you finish it,
Waiting for the Night Song
by Julie Carrick Dalton
Waiting for the Night Song (11/25/2020)
For a debut novel, it is beautifully written and a captivating story balancing climate change on one side and illegal immigration on the other, with the fulcrum a murder in which the perpetrator and the victim are inextricably bound. We think we know what happened and who committed this deadly act but as the story unwinds, we find that all our assumptions are erroneous. It's a courageous novel exploring important issues of our day and I highly recommend it.
The Smallest Lights in the Universe: A Memoir
by Sara Seager
Smallest Lights (7/6/2020)
The Smallest Lights in the Universe by Sara Seager is a wonderful book about navigation: navigating the dark places in the universe where there may be other planets, earth-like, that can support life, navigating the dark places in ourselves, navigating rivers in northern Canada and other wild places, navigating a marriage, being a parent, a mother of two boys, and then a widow, all the while pursuing life in the universe and excelling professionally. From the first few pages, so simply written and so engaging, I couldn't put it down. This memoir will open your heart as it did mine. I enjoyed immensely.
Catherine House: A Novel
by Elisabeth Thomas
Catherine House (3/11/2020)
For a first novel it was engaging and readable but the story was not well developed and ultimately disappointing. There were too many loose ends and the star of the book, plasm, was never adequately flushed out, part mind control and part fantasy, to know exactly what the secret was.
The Mountains Sing
by Nguyen Phan Que Mai
The Vietnam War in Full View (2/6/2020)
This gorgeously written novel explores four generations of a Vietnamese family impacted by the Vietnam War. Mai focuses on all aspects of policy as well as repercussions of this war: Land Reform, the war, the destruction, death, anger, grief, loss of life and limb, loss of confidence and sanity. We all also are invited to experience the strength of family, the generosity, kindness, resilience, and forgiveness. The book is a kaleidoscope of the earthquake that is war, touching on the intense pain, poverty, and finding personal redemption in the recognition of the toll that survival sometimes costs.
The Seine: The River that Made Paris
by Elaine Sciolino
The Seine: The River That Made Paris by Elaine Sciolino (10/2/2019)
The Seine, nearly five hundred miles long, showcases Paris in all its glory and winds its way to the English Channel and adventures outward to New York and elsewhere. It is a shallow dirty river with a history of novelists and artists, breweries and booksellers, and romantics and dreamers. Eliane Sciolino's journey takes you into all the nooks and crannies that are the bounty of any long river. Her zealous research covers infinite possibilities as well as focusing a good deal of the energy to the river's intimate relationship with Paris. Whether you've been to Paris or not, Sciolino's history is rich and bound to entice anyone to at least imagine seeing this river in their lifetime, if only in the many films the Seine plays a part.
Nothing to See Here
by Kevin Wilson
Nothing to See Here (6/15/2019)
Reading a book where you've heard that children burst into flames sounds like a zombie book for Gen-Xers, but it's not. This is a book for anyone who has ever felt like an underdog and knows, that no matter how much money you throw at a problem, it is never a substitute for love. And still knowing this, you can't put the book down; it's both fun and entertaining and before long, you're finished with the book but wish it were longer.
Transcription
by Kate Atkinson
Opposites Attract (5/16/2019)
For me, the funny thing about Transcription is that I don't particularly like Kate Atkinson's style and yet the story is so fun and engaging with wonderful turns and twists that I simply could not put it down and enjoyed the book thoroughly to the very last word.
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