Much has been written about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s good times — the Gatsby years, the parties — but the aftermath is less examined. Stewart O’Nan’s latest novel, West of Sunset, imagines Fitzgerald’s last stages in life. Centered around his late-’30s Hollywood years, the writer see-saws between struggle and vindication while trying maintain some semblance of […]
Though I have not read or watched everything the Sherlock world has to offer, I am fond of smart people who are good at their job, so the consulting detective’s universe is interesting to me. Between those characters and enjoying Anthony Horowitz’s work on Foyle’s War, I wanted to like Moriarty a lot more than I did.
Ah yes, we’re in the thick of the year-end “best of” lists floating about the internet, but far be it from me to miss out on telling you what my favorites were this year. Are you in need of reading suggestions? Look no further.
Recently, the mister noted that I’ve become somewhat preoccupied with early 1900s “upper-crusty British people,” as he put it. Taking a look at my Netflix viewing and some of my reading, he’s not wrong. Though set in New York, Elisa DeCarlo’s The Abortionist’s Daughter fits snugly within a genre rife with burgeoning feminism and class […]
The holes in our lives require energy. Everything after must be arranged around that absence, and that effort often continues the devastation. In After I’m Gone, Laura Lippman takes the disappearance of one shady businessman, Felix Brewer, and follows the repercussions on his wife, daughters, and mistress.
Cristina Henríquez’s newly published The Book of Unknown Americans, is not about immigrants’ relationship to white people. Ideally, this would not be unusual in a novel, but in a literary landscape that is still struggling with diversity, it’s refreshing to read her insightful take on the American Dream.
Set during World War I and promising an aristocratic feminist awakening, I wanted to like Somewhere in France a lot more than I did. Jennifer Robson’s story of Lady Elizabeth Neville-Ashford and Doctor Robert Fraser goes on too long for what is at stake, but it still has its redeeming qualities.
I’m home. The sun is shining, and it’s all good, but after the greatest summer in my hometown, I feel I need a lot more time to properly arrive. I’m still coming to terms with all the memories that hit me around the head at every street corner. Suddenly, it seems impossibly hard to make […]
Every few months or so, someone on my Facebook newsfeed or elsewhere will put out a general call for book recommendations. Other friends will chime in, and the discussion that ensues makes us all end up adding more books to our to-read mental lists. In the spirit of those sorts of posts, from the semi-varied […]
In the early 1900s, spiritualism was a popular religious movement in the United States and portions of Europe. Its adherents believed in spirits from another world that could appear and communicate with ours, if the conditions were right. Reports of seeing faeries and other non-human creatures appeared in magazines such as The Strand, and perhaps […]
A Declaration: Lidia Yuknavitch has done more for “the body as art form” than anyone in recent memory. (Maybe that’s not accurate, but I feel that way, so let’s roll with it.) Her memoir, The Chronology of Water, is all about her own body, the brutal beauty in what can happen to a body, and […]
I know, I know, this is the year where a million reviewers say, “Don’t read Fifty Shades of Grey, read this!” I’d like to think that it’s because that novel’s popularity is only exceeded by its awfulness, not to mention the number of people who hate-read it. But seriously, if you want lots of sex […]
Despite Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time seeming like one of those books that “everyone” has read since its 2003 publication, it was only two months ago when I first picked it up. Perhaps like a lot of readers, the book club in which I participate chose it for discussion. […]
Instead of being another adult reading a YA book, I happened to stumble across one not explicitly aimed at any age group, despite having a young narrator. Marjorie Reynolds’ The Starlite Drive-In captures the feelings of a transformative 1950s summer, one wrapped in family secrecy and yearning.
Can we talk for a minute about the terms “chick lit” and “fluff”? I find my irritation feelers raising whenever I hear those words attributed to books. The implied dismissiveness suggests that any story that is light and has any element of romance, and is also written by woman, is not worth taking seriously. Reasonable, […]