Nalo Hopkinson is becoming one of my favorite writers. Her novels are creative and humorous, informative and provocative. Sister Mine, like Brown Girl in the Ring, is set in Toronto and revolves around a family with formidable spiritual powers. As with BGITR, celestial beings or gods are characters in the story, and these gods are rooted in Caribbean religion/spirituality. While the search for lost mojo is a big part of this novel, and that part is fascinating and fun, the dominant theme that runs through […]
Same as it ever was
4.5 stars. I just can’t keep myself away from mystery books this year. And why would I even want to with fare as good as this? Attica Locke’s The Cutting Season was a really good book and I’m super excited to read her first book because I’ve heard it’s even better. Caren is a middle-aged black woman raising a young daughter on what used to be a Louisiana sugar plantation called Belle Vie. Her family worked the land for decades and Belle Vie is in […]
Uh-oh, You Made the Wrong Sucker a Cuckold
I liked Woman with a Secret. I’ve read all of the Zailer/Waterhouse detective series (this book is #9), but other than Little Face (still one of the most terrifying books I’ve ever read), I haven’t loved any of them, and the last couple were pretty terrible. Woman with a Secret felt like a huge improvement. Hannah knows how to write a book that you can’t put down, but she doesn’t always know how to write a mystery that is both realistic and hard to for the reader to solve. Too often I’ve […]
Keys and Locks
This collection of short stories by Helen Oyeyemi is a mix of fairy tale and the modern world, of the fanciful and the dark, with a generous portion of sexuality thrown in. In some ways, it reminds me of Angela Carter’s work, but Oyeyemi’s stories, while dealing with heavy themes such as betrayal, abandonment and disappointment, maintain a lightness. Her characters demonstrate a quality that’s not exactly optimism, but a willingness to carry on, a good natured fatalism that tempers the darkness. The nine stories […]
“Oh, well. Marmalade has to make its own way in life, like the rest of us, she thought.”
This is all terribly confusing. It started out confusing and never really resolved. The Alice in the title is referring to Alice in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. We basically alternate between Ada, Alice’s friend, and Lydia, Alice’s sister. Ada has slipped her governess, Miss Armstrong, and has continued unescorted to bring a jar of marmalade to her friend Alice’s family. Ada has stumbled into Wonderland and goes on a search for her friend. Wonderland is as it always was, confusing yet sometimes profound. Our Lydia […]
In which Fat Charlie answers the door and Spider encounters flamingos.
This was a superfun experiment in re-reading a book and its sequel in the correct order for the first time. As I mentioned in my “American Gods” re-read review, the first time around, I read “Anansi Boys” first, and it was nevertheless a totally delicious ride untainted by any sort of tyrannical adherence to an orderly timeline. I think Gaiman would approve. This time around, I read them in order, although I’m keeping with this personal tradition by learning too late that there’s a short […]
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