Synopsis:
Prodigal Jack Boughton has returned to Gilead, bringing joy to his dying father and an ache to his lonely sister’s heart.
Review:
It breaks my heart to say this, but I don’t think Home lives up to Gilead. Mailynne Robinson’s prose is still astonishing in its simplicity, and the characters are just as sharp as ever. [...]
Popularity: 9% [?]
Tags: American Literature
Synopsis:
An aging minister writes a letter to his young son, telling him all he’ll never have the chance to tell him when his son is a man.
Review:
“Just now I was listening to a song on the radio, standing there swaying to it a little, I guess, because your mother saw me from the hallway and [...]
Popularity: 15% [?]
Tags: American Literature
Synopsis:
When elderly Ginny’s sister returns home for the first time since she was a girl, old memories surface that threaten Ginny’s carefully ordered existence.
Review:
I’m incredibly thankful for the Queens Library for getting The Sister to me so quickly–I can’t remember the last time I read a book so recently published. The review in the [...]
Popularity: 21% [?]
Tags: British Literature
Synopsis:
A mother’s love is tested when she gives birth in 1943 to a daughter who is, in the lingua franca, is a “Mongolian Idiot.”
Review:
I picked up Jewel because I’m going to be participating in a writing workshop on Thursday led by Bret Lott. I figured I would read Jewel because it was the book [...]
Popularity: 19% [?]
Tags: American Literature
Synopsis:
Deanna’s lived under a dark cloud ever since her dad caught her having sex when she was just 13, and her dreams of getting out just might expire under the weight of his disapproval.
Review:
I’m a latecomer getting to Sara Zarr’s National Book Award Finalist novel Story of a Girl, though it’s been on my radar [...]
Popularity: 54% [?]
Tags: American Literature
What’s your favorite book that nobody else has heard of? You know, not Little Women or Huckleberry Finn, not the latest best-seller . . . whether they’ve read them or not, everybody “knows” those books. I’m talking about the best book that, when you tell people that you love it, they go, “Huh? Never [...]
Popularity: 39% [?]
Tags: On Reading
Synopsis:
To fulfill an ancient prophecy, dark magic is woven around a baby girl so that she will appear to be a boy, but the cost is the life and soul of her twin brother whose ghost now violently haunts the castle.
Review:
For some reason I thought The Bone Doll’s Twin was a one-off, so towards the [...]
Popularity: 37% [?]
Tags: American Literature
Synopsis:
Fearful of her husband’s sexual advances, a young mother falls into a spectacular case of hysteria–that might not be all in her head.
Review:
Angelica is yet another neo-Gothic tale, set in a Victorian England conjured more from literature than from history. It has all of the elements you’d want: repressed sexuality, midnight visions, hysteria and [...]
Popularity: 43% [?]
Tags: American Literature
Synopsis:
Having grown up with a controlling, secret-keeping mother, a young man yearns to know his family’s history and meet his letter-writing lover in person, but his journey takes him face to face with madness and murder.
Review:
Thank you, thank you, thank you to Eva for recommending this book!
The Ghost Writer is a straight up Gothic tale, [...]
Popularity: 40% [?]
Tags: Australian Literature
Synopsis:
An Indian-American immigrant named after a Russian writer struggles to find his place in the world.
Review:
I know the month is only 2 days young, but The Namesake might be my favorite read of October. Sprawling and intimate, Gogol Ganguli’s story riveted me in a way that I wish Zadie Smith’s White Teeth had. [...]
Popularity: 18% [?]
Tags: American Literature
