I love just about everything Walter Mosley writes. The Last Days of Ptolemy Gray is one of my favorite novels ever, The Tempest Tales made me laugh and think, his Easy Rawlins mysteries make me cry and think, and his most recent series, starring ex-boxer Lenoid McGill, make me smile wryly and think even more. [...]
Continue Reading →Stephen King’s latest novel, 11/22/63, is a bit slow getting started but then it soars in a gripping and sometimes terrifying “what if” flight of fancy: what if you could change history, what if you could go back in time and prevent a hunting accident, a hot-blooded murder, or the assassination of John F. Kennedy? [...]
Continue Reading →I absolutely loved the novel Jamesland by Michelle Huneven, which was loaned to me by a cherished and bookish friend. I am glad to have sneezed all over the book, for now I can keep it for myself — and I have ordered a brand-new copy for my friend. Jamesland tells the story of two [...]
Continue Reading →The World We Found by Thrity Umrigar is a sparkling and sharp slice of life that, in presenting four personal stories, reflects and illuminates universal truths. Four women have been friends since their student days in Bombay, during the heady but dangerous years of the 1970s when protests and marches dominated university life and parents [...]
Continue Reading →For Christmas, my uncle in Belgium sent to me a book written by the Flemish writer Stefan Brijs, titled The Angel Maker. The Angel Maker has been a huge hit across Europe and now that I’ve read it, I can understand why. Brijs creates, with creepy momentum and rich atmosphere, a thoroughly chilling and enthralling [...]
Continue Reading →Haruki Murakami’s new novel 1Q84 is a very strange but equally mesmerizing novel. I read it without wanting to ever put it down but at 925 pages, I had to put it down to attend to life — and there were times I had to put it down just to figure out what the hell [...]
Continue Reading →The main character of Alice LaPlante’s Turn of Mind is losing her memories, a woman in her mid-sixties who has Alzheimers. Forced to retire from the career she loved, as a highly-regarded hand surgeon, Dr. Jennifer White is struggling to retain what she can, how she can, with the support of family and friends. But [...]
Continue Reading →The Long Song by Andrea Levy is a beautifully wrought account of the last years of slavery in Jamaica, told through the stories of an old woman who mixes fact and fiction, mythology and reality, to reveal the horrors of humans owning other humans. The old woman was born a slave and named “July” as that [...]
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