3.5 stars. The Assistants is just the kind of book that’s fun to read, but hard to find anything to say about it. To be fair, it probably would have been easier to review if I was up to date on my reviews and not writing it a month after finishing it. Yikes. Tina Fontana is the assistant to Robert Barlow, a multinational media mogul in the vein of Rupert Murdoch. He’s richer than God but Tina is the underpaid lackey who makes his life […]
Control
All My Puny Sorrows is a poignant novel about sisters, creativity, depression and suicide. Toews touches on a number of big themes in her story but questions of control– by outside forces, over one’s life, creativity and even death– are the center of the narrative. We tend to admire and support the person who resists oppressive control from outside forces such as patriarchy and religion, the person whose creative force and innovation set her apart. But what if that person also resists more conventional societal […]
Its essence is a mathematical construct, a self-referencing tautology, consecrated in the plane of regret.
A salute to the Cannonball Read and the Readers, for bringing this book into my brain. Holy crap, you guys. So good. Honestly, I had been expecting (and bracing myself for) something super duper effed up, based on the reviews that I had skimmed (to avoid spoilers). And yeah, it’s dark and horrifying and confusing and complex, but still really fricking readable. Here’s what I texted about 20 of my closest friends when I was halfway through and couldn’t stop reading last night: “It’s as […]
Fearsome Women
It’s hard to miss the stories in the news these days involving men sexually assaulting or abusing women, getting a slap on the wrist, and then the women being put through hell for speaking up about their assault. The women get blamed — she was drunk, she was known to sleep around, why was she with that/those guy(s) anyway, she’s a gold digger, etc. We’ve also seen many stories over the years about married men having affairs, being contrite and then the other woman being […]
The most successful formula ever.
Truly Madly Guilty follows the classic Liane Moriarty formula, and that is in no way a bad thing. A Big Event happens. We aren’t told what it is. It happens at a normal, mundane gathering (a backyard BBQ) but it is a huge deal. A few married couples (Tiffany and Vid, Clementine and Sam, Erika and Oliver) are dealing with the fallout from the Big Event in various ways. At first you think you may not be able to keep that many people straight, but […]
To suffer is as human as to breathe.
Any time that there’s new Harry Potter, I become about 15 years younger, and squeeeeeeeeeee. So, of course, new Potter, and I’m there. Full disclosure, I work in theater. Large-scale theater. Big shows. This show is in my work realm. So reading new Potter, but in script form, it was hard to turn off my work brain. “Is that a quickchange?” “need more details about that prop” “are they going to eat that, or can it be glue?” etc. These are the notes that I […]
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