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 end I got impatient when I realized that the story wasn’t going to wrap up anytime soon. I wasn’t in the mood to commit to a new…
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 a spiritualist, all rendered in gorgeous, sumptuous prose from four different points of view.
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, no revisionism here, thank you very much. It’s a tangled labyrinth of memories, letters, and unfinished stories that builds to a creepy, frightening climax that draws…
Synopsis: When Clay receives a box of cassette tapes recorded by a girl who recently committed suicide, he wonders why he was chosen as one of her thirteen reasons. Review: Compelling premise ultimately founders on muddled execution. Asher throws in at least four separate social problems as part of Hannah’s reasons for her suicide, and the construction ends up feeling far too contrived. This has the odd effect of making the story seem small, as though all of the suffering endured by the various characters…
Synopsis: The epic tale of Adam Trask, cuckolded husband to a whore and father of twin boys, one dark, one light. Review: I’m rather embarrassed to confess East of Eden is the first Steinbeck I have ever read. Big deal, you say–except I majored in American Studies in college with a focus on how literature and popular culture reveal sociological truths about the American people. I was obsessed with writers like Sinclair Lewis and Theodore Dreiser. I was enamored of post-Industrial Revolution American life. It…
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 beginning fantasy series that have not been concluded, but my brother was so enthusiastic about this one that I had to check it out. Patrick Rothfuss’s writing has a…
Synopsis: Leah Greene is dead, and her ex-best friend Laine thinks it’s her fault because she hated Leah so much for what they did in the closet. Review: Lessons from a Dead Girl is definitely the kind of YA that I gravitated to when I was a teen: suggestive premise and hints of illicit activity, all masked in an object lesson about something or other. This is a fair-to-middling entrant in the subgenre. The writing is good with strong characters, but it never really soars…
Synopsis: Bereft and aimless, an ex-meth head signs up to test a new drug promising to cure anxiety of all kinds. Review: I picked up Sunless because it promised a Chuck Pahlaniuk-esque satirical romp through all the woes of our modern age, dressed up in off-kilter post-apocalyptic trappings and with an addictive prose style. Instead, I suffered through a lazily written, incoherently plotted, almost aggressively aimless stylistic exercise that I had to force myself to finish reading. Thankfully it’s not very long, so I could…
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. Though perhaps that’s just that I’m an American and not British. I found Gogol’s world and struggles to be accessible, and I connected with him even though he’s very…
Synopsis: Hired to be an au pair to a schizophrenic man, a Swedish girl watches as interfamilial tensions come to a boiling point, with deadly results. Review: Barbara Vine (the alter ego of best-selling crime novelist Ruth Rendell) has carved out a niche as deft portrayer of tightly interwoven groups of people who are all set to go poof! in spectacular and surprising ways. The Minotaur concerns a family that revolves itself around the supposed schizophrenia of the only son and heir to the family…