It’s not every debut novelist that can turn out a book that’s so masterful, so haunting, and so beautiful as Everything I Never Told You is. There’s a very good reason Amazon named it the best book of 2014. In fiction, I don’t always gravitate towards these kinds of books. It’s more of a cerebral, slow-burn of a novel. There’s not a lot of action that takes place over the few hundred pages, no big bombshells dropped that leave you gasping and turning furiously to the […]
Fun story. But fire the editor, please.
Eiji Miyaki is a young man in search of his father. In a modern, Japanese, coming-of-age tale, he doesn’t meet his father but if his goal in meeting him was to learn something about himself, well that happens in spades. Eiji’s father is fiercely protective of his paternity and keeps a watchdog lawyer and assorted Yakuza goons to keep Eiji from meeting him. The story meanders through derailments on Eiji’s journey. When Eiji hits a roadblock, or is planning a next step, he frequently diverts into […]
Nada, a.k.a What Happens when A Family Lives Too Long Together Under One Roof
One of my reading goals for this year is to read one book written in Spanish by an Iberian-American author, for every book I read in English. I’ve been pretty bad at keeping up with reading in Spanish and I figure why not start something new? So where to start? I decided to start with a list of award winners from several of Spain’s publishing firms. I figure why not start with the best? Well due to the limitations of my library system, the newest […]
Better than expected
I’ve read, and didn’t particularly like, The Jane Austen Book Club, so I wasn’t especially interested in reading another book by Karen Joy Fowler. However, what happens so often these days occurred again: I saw a number of positive reviews of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (2014) on Cannonball Read, and they convinced me that I should give it a try. The story revolves around Rosemary Cook, a rather aimless college student at UC Davis with little to no friends. We know almost immediately […]
Nearly but not quite
Every year, there’s another attempt at writing The Great American Novel. And the latest instalment in that neverending series is David Gilbert’s latest novel, & Sons. Very early on, Gilbert sets out his stall with “Fathers start as gods and end as myths and in between whatever human form they take can be calamitous for their sons”. So we know what we’re dealing with. This is the story of A.N. Dyer, a Salinger-esque novelist, as reclusive as he is revered, and his three sons. The eldest is […]
I’m so sad I’m done with this book
Last year, I read and reviewed the first four novels in The Patrick Melrose series, and it was, without a doubt, some of the most eye-opening books I read last year. At Last is the final book of the series, and finishing it makes me so sad. My friend who introduced these books to me once said, “I am so jealous that you are getting to read these for the first time,” and I understand now what she means because I feel so sad that […]
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