novel

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

May 2, 2023
Posted in , ,

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.”

Read More

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

April 4, 2023
Posted in , ,

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.

Read More

Book Review: Merritt Tierce’s Smart and Ruthless “Love Me Back” — The Way We Live Now

October 13, 2014
Posted in , ,

So much of what this novel has to say feels bracing and necessary. This is where a good part of America lives—dangling over a chasm.

Read More

Book Review: “An Unnecessary Woman” — A Memorable Story of Redemption

February 5, 2014
Posted in , ,

When the septuagenarian protagonist of this novel finally gets out of her claustrophobic apartment, everything changes.

Read More

Book Review: “The Devil I Know” — A Brilliant Satire of Ireland’s Boom and Bust

February 3, 2014
Posted in , ,

Claire Kilroy’s dark and fantastical comedy “The Devil I Know” nails the greed and rampaging ambition of the corrupt avatars of “the new Ireland” — developers, bankers, and government pooh-bahs.

Read More

Book Review: Richard Powers’s Urgent “Orfeo” — Can Art Save Us?

January 27, 2014
Posted in , ,

As with any Richard Powers novel, when you finish “Orfeo” you will have no doubt you are alive, awake, and likely ready to start over at page one.

Read More

Book Review: “Next Big Thing” — The Music Scene and Rock Clubs of 1980s Boston, Revived

November 30, 2013
Posted in , ,

In “Next Big Thing,” Terry Kitchen’s prose brings 1980s Boston, its music scene, and its rock clubs—from the long gone Rathskeller to the still standing Paradise—to life.

Read More

Book Review: “In the Land of the Living” — A Coming-of-Age Yarn Mixed With Grief

July 18, 2013
Posted in ,

Austin Ratner’s follow up to “The Jump Artist” is an an exuberant, terrific novel — for its weaknesses, as well as its strengths.

Read More

Book Review: “The Wanting” — Ambitious and Audacious Fiction about the Middle East

April 16, 2013
Posted in ,

There are so many characters to root for in “The Wanting” that you tend to read with your head swimming, and with an increasing sense of urgency as the senseless is revealed to have a logic of its own.

Read More

Book Review: “The Last Nude” — An Engaging Historical Fiction About Seductive Surfaces

March 30, 2012
Posted in , ,

Even though she covers herself with demurely crossed arms, her gaze could burn holes through fabric. If it looks like the artist had a predilection for strong, bosomy girls, well, there’s a reason for that.

Read More

Recent Posts