Mostly Fiction Book Reviews in culture
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
Book Quote: “That’s it. 1984 and 1Q84 are fundamentally the same in terms of how they work. If you don’t believe in the world, and if there is no love in it, then everything is phony. No... Continue reading »
Mostly Fiction Book Reviews in culture
THE FIFTH WOMAN by Henning Mankell
I first read this 1997 novel (the sixth in Henning Mankell's Inspector Wallander series) in 2004, and saw the television adaptation starring Kenneth Branagh last year. So the general outline was... Continue reading »
Mostly Fiction Book Reviews in culture
BOLTZMANN’S TOMB by Bill Green
"This is not a book about the great Austrian physicist, Ludwig Boltzmann, nor, despite its importance in my life, is it about Antarctica. It is more about time and chance and the images and dreams we... Continue reading »
Mostly Fiction Book Reviews in culture
THE DROP by Michael Connelly
Harry Bosch is the real deal. Michael Connelly's THE DROP is another superb entry in this outstanding series about an L. A. cop who is cynical and battle-weary, yet still committed to doing his job. Continue reading »
Mostly Fiction Book Reviews in culture
A STUDENT OF WEATHER by Elizabeth Hay
Elizabeth Hay centres her superb, enchanting and deeply moving novel around Norma Joyce and sister Lucinda, her senior by nine years. Set against the beautifully evoked natural environments of... Continue reading »
Mostly Fiction Book Reviews in culture
QUEEN OF AMERICA by Luis Alberto Urrea
Like its predecessor, THE HUMMINGBIRD’S DAUGHTER, Urrea’s sequel, QUEEN OF AMERICA is a panoramic, picaresque, sprawling, sweeping novel that dazzles us with epic destiny, perilous twists, and... Continue reading »
Mostly Fiction Book Reviews in culture
THE THIRD REICH BY Roberto Bolano
Bolaño cites this quotation from Goethe (also given in German) towards the end of this early but posthumously discovered novel. It is as good a key as any to what the book may be about. The... Continue reading »
Mostly Fiction Book Reviews in culture
ASSUMPTION by Percival Everett
The hardscrabble desert land of New Mexico is the perfect setting for Percival Everett’s new novel, ASSUMPTION, mainly because it mirrors the protagonist’s character incredibly well. Ogden Walker... Continue reading »
Mostly Fiction Book Reviews in culture
THE MARRIAGE PLOT by Jeffrey Eugenides
"Reader, I married him." What sensitive reader hasn’t thrilled to the last lines of the novel JANE EYRE, when the mousy and unprepossessing girl triumphantly returns to windswept Thornfield as a... Continue reading »
Mostly Fiction Book Reviews in culture
ED KING by David Guterson
ED KING had me mesmerized from the first page and did not let up throughout the book. It is a contemporary retelling of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex set in the American northwest. The protagonist's name,... Continue reading »
Mostly Fiction Book Reviews in culture
BLUE NIGHTS by Joan Didion
BLUE NIGHTS is ostensibly about the loss of a child. In reality, however, it is about the passing of time. Indeed, it is the passing of time that captures all loss, loss of children, of loved ones,... Continue reading »
Mostly Fiction Book Reviews in culture
BEFORE THE END, AFTER THE BEGINNING by Dagoberto Gilb
Dagoberto Gilb’s latest book, BEFORE THE END, AFTER THE BEGINNING, although a slight collection, is loaded with insight and humor. It’s a book about identity, about the tension between limiting... Continue reading »
Mostly Fiction Book Reviews in culture
11/22/63: A NOVEL by Stephen King
Dedicated Stephen King fans are in for an epic treat—an odyssey, a Fool’s journey, an adventure with romance. A genre-bending historical novel with moral implications, this story combines echoes... Continue reading »
Mostly Fiction Book Reviews in culture
ALL CRY CHAOS by Leonard Rosen
In Leonard Rosen's superb mystery, ALL CRY CHAOS, Henri Poincaré, fifty-seven, is a veteran Interpol agent who believes that it is "better to let one criminal go free than to abuse the law and... Continue reading »
Mostly Fiction Book Reviews in culture
THE OUTLAW ALBUM by Daniel Woodrell
Daniel Woodrell is widely known for the movie adaptation of his novel, Winter’s Bone, which won the Sundance Film Festival’s Best Picture Prize in 2010. He has just published his first book of... Continue reading »
Mostly Fiction Book Reviews in culture
HELL AND GONE by Duane Swierczynski
HELL AND GONE, another nail-biting read from author Duane Swierczynski is the second volume in the Charlie Hardie Trilogy. I Continue reading »
Mostly Fiction Book Reviews in culture
THE GREAT LEADER by Jim Harrison
Once, many years ago when I was living in Northern Michigan, Jim Harrison walked into the restaurant where I was dining. He didn’t so much walk in, in retrospect, as lumber in. It was the Blue Bird... Continue reading »
Mostly Fiction Book Reviews in culture
LIGHT FROM A DISTANT STAR by Mary McGarry Morris
Nellie Peck is thirteen years old going on forty. She is wise, intelligent and impulsive. Despite her precociousness, however, she is still a child. She lives with her parents and two siblings, Ruth... Continue reading »
Mostly Fiction Book Reviews in culture
THE SUBMISSION by Amy Waldman
The brilliance of Amy Waldman’s book is that she does not try to apply logic to why 9/11 occurred, nor does she attempt to recreate the complex and traumatic emotions that most Americans felt that... Continue reading »
Mostly Fiction Book Reviews in culture
WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I TALK ABOUT RUNNING by Haruki Murakami
In his running journal-cum-memoir, WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I TALK ABOUT RUNNING , titled in obvious homage to Raymond Carver, Haruki Murakami claims that “people basically become runners because... Continue reading »
