After reading both Gilead and Home, I was curious to see how Marilynne Robinson was going to tie up her series with Lila. But since she’s created such a complex array of characters, the novel fits easily in with the other novels and adds yet another layer of richness and depth to the complex world of Gilead, Iowa. Lila is all about Lila’s life before and after she enters Gilead and meets John Ames. We already know that she marries him, so this novel focuses […]
The anthropology of small-town living
Surprise! Another Barbara Pym novel! This one has got to be one of my favorites, though. It deals with issues of perception and marriage, and sexual identity forms a huge part of society in this novel. Published a few months before Pym’s own death in 1980, this novel questions the status quo and is thoroughly modern in a way that even I did not expect of Pym. Emma Horwick is a 30-something anthropologist living in her mother’s cottage out in the country. There, she becomes […]
Home to Stay
Whoever said April comes in like a lamb and out like a lion wasn’t kidding, but I always forget that May comes roaring in like a lion and flaming out like a dragon. Last week was finals (thankfully, I’m down to one class this semester), and this next weekend is my graduation. Woo hoo! I still have other projects I’m working on for the summer and the next semester, so no rest for the wicked. I am posting a bunch of reviews today, though some […]
Because you know I’m all about that Jane…
Anyone who knows me knows I am all.about.that.Jane (with apologies to Megan Trainor, whose twee song I am now appropriating). So of course when Alexander McCall Smith announced at the book signing I attended in November 2013 that he was writing a contemporary adaptation of Emma, I was excited. Very excited. Smith is an Austen acolyte, and also incidentally, that of Barbara Pym, as well (and one of the people who recommended her to me in the first place). For the record, Mr. McCall Smith […]
War and Violence against Children
There are several things I am keeping in mind as I am compiling my fall class: (1) I’ll be teaching undergrads, a majority of which are non-majors, so my books need to be readable; (2) If I am teaching contemporary global literature, I need to have a diverse array of authors; (3) I cannot be telling “a single story.” So I’ve been checking a diverse array of authors from various African nations and wondering which ones will be the best fit for my course. I […]
A searing vision of post-apocalypse Africa in sci-fi
I’m currently planning a contemporary global literature course (for a variety of reasons), and I’ve been trying to extend my specialty in contemporary fiction to texts and foci outside my little niche. So when my friend M raved about Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death on Goodreads, I was intrigued. Okorafor herself had read an article from The Washington Post about rape as ethnic cleansing in the Sudan and was inspired to write about the child of one such violent conception. A young Okeke woman is […]
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