A debut novel and one picked as an Amazon Rising Star this year, Haynes has written something that I feel can’t help but draw comparisons to The Secret History. Our narrator, Alex Morris, has lost her fiancé in horrific circumstances and to help recover, leaves her London life behind, moves to Edinburgh and takes a job at a Pupil Referral Unit, a unit run by one of her best friends from her University days. One particular class of five awkward, wayward, unpleasant and yes violent teens gets […]
Flavia de Luce is all growed up. Kinda.
Flavia de Luce, we meet again. I’ve been nuts about the magnificently precocious 12 year old amateur sleuth ever since the opening pages of the first book, when she looked at the cook employed by her father at their huge country house and thought “will no-one rid us of this turbulent pastry chef?” She is an absolute delight of a character, though the series has shown signs of stalling, as Flavia continues to be the same age and remain in the same location, edging ever […]
House. Lake. Dirt. Woods. AND REPEAT.
Ah this book. Last year, it was everywhere I turned. It was on list after list after list of recommendations, of mid year and year end round ups. It was hotly anticipated and has been highly lauded. So even though it wasn’t really something I would normally go after, I thought I would see what all the fuss was about. And as unwieldy as it is, I do really like the title. It’s not yet published in the UK, so I imported it via a […]
Failing to Launch from Boys to Men: A Troubling Epidemic
Who knew that Matthew McConaughey’s foray into romantic comedy–a most dreadful film genre to most critics–would be so sociologically and culturally relevant? In Dr. Leonard Sax’s Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (2009), he argues that McConaughey’s Failure to Launch is a gem of a movie in that it reflects an American epidemic of men who are underachieving and who seem to be perfectly accepting of that fact. According to Dr. Sax, the United States has been experiencing a […]
No Place Like Home
The House on Mango Street is a short novel about a year in the life of a Mexican American adolescent named Esperanza. She and her family (parents, two older brothers and a younger sister named Nenny) have moved into a house of their own in Chicago for the first time. In a series of vignettes, Cisneros paints a deeply moving picture, or series of pictures, of life on Mango Street and of Esperanza’s hopes and fears. Cisneros’ background as a poet comes through in her […]
A book almost as long as the actual French Revolution.
I have no idea (off the top of my head) how long the French Revolution lasted, but I know it was a while (I’m a product of the American education system. We learned about the fact that the French Revolution happened, but that’s about it. I don’t recall any details, or I didn’t until I read this book). Anyway, I’d heard good things about Hilary Mantel, so I thought I’d work my way through her ouvre, starting with this one. Oof. I enjoyed the book, […]
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