Halfway through Moonglow, I caught myself with my hand over my mouth, trying to keep my breath inside my body because the prose was so exceptionally beautiful. I had my worries before reading this book. I have only recently discovered Chabon, and have only otherwise read The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, which was so stunning that it made me want to punch something. There is a lot of hype surrounding Moonglow, and even I only got it by accident from the library on a strict, one […]
If you are different from a person everyone agrees is wonderful, it means you are somehow wrong.
This was a tough one, emotionally. One True Thing is the story of a brilliant young woman “with her whole life ahead of her” who is guilted by her controlling and emotionally-arrested father into leaving her life behind to come home and care for her dying mother. And it covers so much ground in a very gentle but sad way: gender roles, parenting, family dynamic, literature and poetry, agency, friendship, romance, and ultimately, euthanasia. At the very beginning of the story, Ellen tells us that […]
You’d have expected me to be just a minor character in this saga
This is a tough one to review. I really liked reading it, but in the end, it felt as though the exposition was finally wrapped up, and now I was ready for the story. But actually, the book was over. Not that there isn’t enough movement in Eileen, it’s just that the narrator tells us very early in the book that this is the story of her final days trapped in her terrible and sad life as she was raised – or more accurately, grew […]
For a terrifying moment I thought he was going to hug me, but fortunately we both remembered we were English just in time.
Wait, hang on a second. [Looks up how many PC Peter Grant novels there are so far.] [Discovers Ben Aaronovitch wrote a few serials for “Doctor Who,” in the late Eighties. Light bulb.] [Discovers that although the book jackets say “PC Peter Grant Series,” whoever edited Wikipedia last prefers to refer to them as the “Rivers of London Series.” Huh, makes sense. Also: spoilerish.] [Discovers there are 6 “Rivers of London” novels so far, and what’s this, now? 9 spin-off graphic novels? And 4 companion […]
Birds got to fly, fish got to swim, fools and policemen got to rush in.
THREE CHEERS FOR SNARKY BRITISH URBAN FANTASY. I didn’t know I was looking for this series, the PC Peter Grant series. I actually had it checked out from the library and let the loan expire the first time around… thanks, The Devourers, for taking so long to slog through that I had to wait to get Midnight Riot back again before I could dive into this world! I love this world, this miraculously sarcastic world where a newly-minted London police constable with a probably lateral […]
Is it possible to outthink yourself?
When I was reading Dark Matter, I said to a friend who was worried that I was bored (long story, irrelevant to this review), “no way, because I love my book right now! It’s got car chases, and alternate universes, and multiplicity, and science, and action, and adventure!” I’m not kidding, I had a total blast reading this book, and couldn’t wait to get back to it every time I had to put it down. It’s not life-altering literary fiction. But they can’t all be. […]
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