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Category Archives: Fiction – literary
A Review of Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend
Earlier this week when I took my Yarn Along photo, I had read about 90% of My Brilliant Friend. I had already started to warm to it after feeling disappointed with the first half of the novel. When I scrolled … Continue reading
Early Thoughts on Kia Corthron’s The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter
The meaning of the title of this long, engrossing novel starts to come clear around page 138 – well ahead of the 200-page mark at which I planned to start complaining – so of course I wanted to share it … Continue reading
A Review of Erskine Caldwell’s God’s Little Acre
I’ve owned this book for years, and now that I’ve finally read it I feel a little creeped out having lived so long in the presence of such a strange, alarming little book. It’s a good book – a very … Continue reading
A Review of Larry Watson’s Justice
I loved this book – probably more than any other book I’ve read this year. This is one of those collections of linked stories that masquerade as a novel. I actually like it better when I think of its chapters as … Continue reading
Why Don’t I Know More About Italy? – And Other Thoughts (Actually Not That Many Other Thoughts) on Umberto Eco’s Numero Zero
When I was preparing to write this review, I realized that I needed a really good metaphor to describe what it feels like to read a work of social satire from a culture one doesn’t know well. The closest I … Continue reading
Thoughts on Larry Watson’s Laura
Recently I learned that Larry Watson has written other books besides Montana 1948. I’m not sure why this surprised me, except perhaps is that when an author emerges, publishes one book, and then disappears, that one book is often something … Continue reading
Thoughts on T.C. Boyle’s Wild Child and Other Stories (by Jill)
I’ve read a few of T.C. Boyle’s short stories before, but never a whole collection of them. Wild Child and Other Stories was amazing. Each story, no matter how short, was a self-contained little universe. I wish I’d had … Continue reading
A Review of Zia Haider Rahman’s In the Light of What We Know
I’m not sure why, but I expected this book to be similar to The Kite Runner – and it would be, I suppose, if The Kite Runner were written by Joseph Conrad. This novel is about two friends: grown men … Continue reading
Early Thoughts on Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose
Because I really don’t have enough projects to juggle right now (that’s a joke), I decided to start reading Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. I actually do have a reason for reading it now, but it’s not an … Continue reading
“You Put Your Whole Self In”: Final Thoughts on on Lily King’s Euphoria
I ended up enjoying Euphoria quite a lot. Once I got used to the quirks of the narrative voice (more on that in a moment), I found that this novel follows a classic love-triangle plot, though in a way it’s … Continue reading
Postcards From Purgatory 