Before her epic Icelandic journey begins, Valerie Tobruk is first a toll collector, a job that is often hidden in plain sight. While Valerie enjoys her short interactions with her customers and even forms relationships with her regulars, most just pass right through her booth and pay her no time of day. In this way, Valerie is both deeply part of the world and tucked away from it, a dichotomy that seems a perfect fit for her personality.
Read MoreIn the early 1920s, the American soldiers who had survived the brutal trench warfare had returned from the Great War in Europe. They returned to their homes and to new lives in a rapidly urbanizing country. Except some people lived a rural existence, not much different than the lives of their parents before them. And some of those same people had spent the war deep underground in a coal mine.
Read MorePart thriller, part exploration of contemporary race issues in America, part mirror to our online selves, this novel is all heart and hard to put down. I tore through While We Were Burning in about two sittings in the course of 24 hours and found myself fascinated by the characters and the story. The tale is perhaps a tad melodramatic at times near the end, but it hovers in the realm of believable in the way that our online selves have created a society where there is more melodrama.
Read MoreOrphaned, alone, and working to survive, life has been rough for Annabel until her fortune changes with a chance meeting with lawyer George Craig. George has newly arrived from big city Knoxville and is educated, intellectually curious, and immediately smitten with Annabel. After a whirlwind romance that seems almost too good to be true, they settle in to a nice home with neighbors that Annabel befriends. For the first time, she is exposed to a middle/upper-middle class existence in her rural town of Dayton, Tennessee.
Read MoreThe Woman with No Name by Audrey Blake is an engaging, well-paced story that was hard to put down. Set in World War II, the novel follows the true story of Yvonne Rudellat’s heroic and brave efforts to undermine the Germans in Vichy France by joining the world of espionage.
Read MoreThere are certain surface parallels between author Dominic Smith and his main character, Hugh. Like Smith, Hugh is an academic, enchanted by the crumbling Italian towns and has traveled to Valetto as part of a research effort. But Hugh has not picked just any Italian town; he comes from a long line of local inhabitants and plans to work on his academic research from the small, Medieval cottage in Valetto that his mom left to him as his inheritance.
Read MoreAs soon as I saw the title of *Close Your Eyes: A Fairy Tale* I was intrigued. What hooked me was the term 'fairy tale,' making me reflect about how rarely that term is used in contemporary fiction, even when the foundational elements are employed.
Read MoreThe ten short stories that comprise Sabina Murray’s latest work, Muckross Abbey and Other Stories, range in length from 16 to 34 pages, which means that each is bite-sized and a quick read. I quickly discovered that as I wrapped up each tale, I immediately wanted to move straight into the next and read the entire book in just a few short sittings before bed (more on that later).
Read MoreCrooked Plow begins with the curiosity of two young sisters going awry. Belonisia and Bibiana, enamored by a shiny knife they find tucked away in luggage under a bed, decide to explore the taste of the metal. They wonder: Will it taste like a spoon? This activity is as ill-fated as it sounds with both receiving serious injuries to their tongues, rendering one essentially mute for life.
Read MoreThe first story opens in the Place des Vosges, the first planned square in Paris, where Victor Hugo resided in the 19th century. His home, situated in the southeastern corner of the square, is a museum open to visitors. The ghost of Victor Hugo appears in the square and engages in humorous dialogue with a former teacher of his works. Thus begins Redkina’s romp around the city.
Read MoreGil has decided it is time to make a change in his life and so, sight unseen, he purchases a home in Arizona and heads out - on foot - from New York. After months of walking across the country with long, desolate roads, truck stop food and truck stop companions, he arrives at his new home in the Arizona desert, a home he later nicknames “the castle”.
Read MoreThe Sleepless is a one-of-a-kind novel: part mystery and crime novel, part science fiction, part dystopian futurism, and at the same time grounded in a topic very timely and relatable: a pandemic. In addition to its multi-genre aspect, the novel explores important questions about how we spend our time, the meaning of life, and the meaningfulness of relationships. At its core, The Sleepless considers one of the future potential paths we are on as a civilization - towards ever-increasing technology incursion into our private spaces and thoughts and the fundamental changes that can occur.
Read MoreFor some reason, a few of my recent reads have featured midwives, and Animal Life fits the pattern. Dómhildur is a midwife in a Reykjavik hospital and comes from a long lines of midwives in her family. Closest to her, perhaps, was her childless great-aunt, now deceased but previously a midwife, whose mantle has settled on her shoulders.
Read MoreAs with the two prior novels of Hamid's that I have read in the last few years, The Last White Man tackles contemporary challenges that pertain, at least in part, to race or ethnic origin. I have known people who have both loved his writing and been turned off by it, and I think the two main routes that lead readers either towards or away from Hamid are the topics of his novels and his writing style, which is perhaps best described as perfunctory. I'd add another word to his style in this particular novel: exacting. Characters often use a particular word, think better of it, and then use a more appropriate word. It is an exercise in the importance of language itself and what we mean, what we say, and the vast abyss that often lies in between.
Read MoreWhere Coyotes Howl begins with Ellen's arrival in Wyoming, in search of a new life away from her family in Iowa. She has been hired to serve as the local teacher after the prior teacher lasted a year, in what turns out to be a trend in the community.
Within moments, it is clear that most of Ellen's clothing and her small allocation of personal belongings that made the trek are no match for the dusty, hardscrabble life on the prairie in the early twentieth century United States.
Read MoreA Woman in Time by Bobi Conn is set in rural Appalachian Kentucky between 1899 and 1939, amidst the backdrop of the Prohibition Era and reminiscent of Lee Smith's Fair and Tender Ladies, set in Virginia's Appalachian region.
Read MorePeople who know Joan - the doctors she works with at the hospital, her boss, her new neighbor, her brother - are pretty sure she is not okay. Joan isn’t sure why they can’t just leave her be - let her work constantly, keep her apartment minimally furnished, and skip out on holiday bashes.
Read MoreLanguage of loss and love suffuce the novel with poignant descriptions that cut to the bone of life. The unstated question which echoes throughout is: What is worth dying for? Is it love, is it loss, is it a belief in a political state? Krishan, the main character, may be on the verge of asking a new question: What is worth living for?
Read MoreWhat publisher would risk publishing a book under this title? You can sure it is one who has a hell of a lot of confidence that this will, in fact, be one hell of a book. My verdict: a resounding yes.
Read MoreDrive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is part crime novel, part animal rights activism, part a tale about aging, and part a tale about living as an outsider in your own community. Sprinkle in a dose of mysticism and astrology, and this is a book that is more than the sum of its parts.
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