fiction

Book Review: “Faraway the Southern Sky” — Portrait of a Young Revolutionary

May 24, 2024
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“Faraway the Southern Sky” is an extraordinary literary achievement because it makes real and present the scuffling life and education of the very young man who grew up to become Ho Chi Minh.

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Book Review: Katherine Heiny’s “Games and Rituals” — Charmingly Amusing Stories

May 2, 2023
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Katherine Heiny has a particular talent for opening lines: “Your elderly father has mistaken his four-thousand-dollar hearing aid for a cashew and eaten it.”

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Book Review: Susanna Hoffs’s “This Bird Has Flown” — A Satisfying Romcom

April 4, 2023
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All in all, This Bird Has Flown is light but not brainless, and engagingly adorable. It’s a perfect beach read for the New Wave set.

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Book Review: Mona Simpson’s “Commitment” — E for Effort

April 3, 2023
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Another installment in the author’s portraits of everyday struggles — and this one is a long-winded, shaggy affair.

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Book Review: “Big Swiss” — Quirky As All Get-Out

February 23, 2023
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Big Swiss is effervescent and funny, even if overcooked to some extent.

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Book Review: “The World and All That It Holds” — A Remarkable Achievement

February 9, 2023
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Aleksandar Hemon’s latest novel is simply dizzying, filled with texture, startling imagery, language in multiple tongues (keep Google within reach!), and it succeeds in most every respect.

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Short Fuse Podcast #55: Talking to Author Meredith Hall about “Beneficence”

June 14, 2022
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Host Elizabeth Howard talks to author Meredith Hall about her debut novel Beneficence, which deals with a family traumatized by death of a child by a gun.

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Book Review: “The Ash Family” — A Commune or a Cult?

March 24, 2019
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The Ash Family is a full-color illustration of how the modern world leaves people vulnerable to radical ideas.

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Book Review: “Washington Black” — Grappling with the Meanings of Liberty

November 8, 2018
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In Washington Black novelist Esi Edugyan has defied the cliché of the escaped slave discovering freedom.

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Book Review: “The Mars Room” — Women Behind Bars

October 14, 2018
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The strength of The Mars Room is its compelling vision of the stultifying and claustrophobic underworld of women in prison.

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