Synopsis:
While working on a novel in Tunisia, a writer encounters his own heart of darkness.
Review:
I had written a truly brilliant review of Patricia Highsmith’s The Tremor of Forgery, but it got eaten. Fie! The salient points were:

Patricia Highsmith plays cat and mouse with the reader just like her most famous creation Tom Ripley [...]

Popularity: 22% [?]

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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: 39% [?]

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Synopsis:
Soldier Son Nevare’s adventures culminate in a battle within his divided self for mastery of his body in defiance of the magic.
Review:
When last we saw Nevare, he was grossly fat and resigned to a life on the outside. A Soldier Son of modest ambition, Nevare’s soul was cleft in two during a battle with [...]

Popularity: 44% [?]

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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% [?]

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Synopsis:
A legendary folk hero tells the first part of his life story, encompassing his early years as a vagabond and his time spent at University studying alchemy and magic.
Review:
It’s not for nothing that The Name of the Wind has been touted as a great fantasy debut. It absolutely is. I am leery of [...]

Popularity: 46% [?]

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Synopsis:
The last of a dying breed, a proper English butler reflects on his life in service.
Review:
I had no idea I would love The Remains of the Day as much as I did. To be honest, I love Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go so much that I was afraid that if I didn’t like [...]

Popularity: 34% [?]

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Synopsis:
The premature baby of Fifth Business was kidnapped by roustabouts, grew up a circus performer, and has grown into the greatest magician in the world. His life story offers the final piece to the question posed in The Manticore: “Who killed Boy Staunton?”
Review:
Robertson Davies’s masterful Deptford Trilogy deserves to be on more must-read lists. [...]

Popularity: 42% [?]

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Synopsis:
One man’s harrowing journey up the Congo in search of enlightenment.
Review:
Blogging really wasn’t invented for talking about a book like Heart of Darkness. I am utterly incapable of coming up with anything approaching an instant reaction to this book. I need to sit with it for a long time, then read it again, [...]

Popularity: 42% [?]

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Synopsis:
Life inside a 1970s TB ward from the point of view of a teenage girl who won’t take her treatment lying down.
Review:
A View from a Kite is a superlative young adult book, featuring a fresh, likable protagonist in an utterly fascinating setting. Gwen is 17 and has tuberculosis, so she lives in a sanatarium [...]

Popularity: 42% [?]

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Synopsis:
A young man with severe amnesia comes to realize that he is being stalked by a conceptual shark (which is much, much scarier than you might think).
Review:
What surprised me most about The Raw Shark Texts was how fast it moved. For all its high-minded metaphysical aims and experimental underpinnings, the book has the pacing [...]

Popularity: 86% [?]

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