This is a place where people aren’t so much haunted by their pasts as they are unknowingly hurtled toward specific and inexorable destinations. And perhaps it feels like a haunting. But it’s a pull, not a push. The Hundred-Year House is the fictional story of an artists’ colony called Laurelfield, just outside Chicago near Lake Michigan. In the afterward, Makkai writes that one theme is the need artists have for community. Other themes would be the masks that people wear, hiding themselves from even those […]
A Time Traveler’s Homage to Jerome K. Jerome
If you are a fan of Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) or PG Wodehouse’s Jeeves novels, this novel is sure to please. Willis is a well known and “decorated” sci-fi author, having won multiple Nebula and Hugo Awards. She discovered JKJ through reading Robert Heinlein and gives him a tip of the hat in an amusing, clever and thoughtful work that combines time travel, mystery, and comedy of manners. It’s 2057 London and Ned Henry, an […]
Ripped From Today’s Headlines!
If you’re looking for a great poolside or beach read for what’s left of summer, The Fever would be a very satisfying choice. It’s a mystery involving teenage lust, parental lust, environmental toxins, and anti-vaxxers. The action focuses on the Nash family. Dad is a high school chemistry teacher, Eli is a dreamy senior and hockey star, Deenie is 16 and dealing with the academic and social pressures that go along with that, and mom is gone, having cheated on dad and moved away years […]
This is what happens when you covet
A female teacher engages in a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old student. This is not exactly a topic that lends itself to humor, but in the hands of Zoe Heller, readers will find biting humor along with social commentary that provokes and makes one squirm. Although the novel (shortlisted for the 2003 Man Booker Prize) is over ten years old, its topic is still relevant and the writing is superb. The novel is told from the point of view of Barbara Covett, a friend of […]
20th Century Dalloways
This short novel, a finalist for the 2004 National Book Award, deals with a circle of women who married and had children in the ’50s somewhere in New England. Much of their story is told in flashbacks from a point in the 1990s, when they have aged and have lost many of those who had been close. As a result, we get nothing like a linear narrative, and that’s not terribly important. The relationships that these women form, the choices they have made, and how […]
The More Things Change …
Winner of a Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction in 1994, this history of the Roosevelts and the home front from 1939 until FDR’s death in 1945 is a meticulously researched and engaging look at both the inner workings of the White House and the changing landscape of the US economy and society during World War II. Both the Roosevelts and the American public showed themselves to be extraordinarily brilliant and sometimes terribly flawed at a critical moment in world history. Goodwin did extensive research on her […]
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