Richard Russo is one of my favorite authors of all time, definitely in the top five. I have yet to read something of his that I didn’t adore from start to finish. He won a Pulitzer for a reason, people. I strongly encourage you to pick up a book of his, any book, and read it immediately. You will thank me, so let me just say you’re welcome now. But I digress. Lou (Lucy) Lynch is writing the story of his life in small-town upstate […]
Turbulent Waters in Post WWI London
Sarah Waters’ The Paying Guests has been getting a lot of good press since its release last month, and the praise for this novel is much deserved. It really is a masterful work. Waters creates a suspenseful and heartbreaking love story against the backdrop of post-WWI London. Its rigid moral climate and deteriorating social and economic situation contribute to an almost suffocating environment that limits opportunity for women and criminalizes unconventional sexual desires. Waters stands shoulder to shoulder with Edith Wharton and Kate Chopin in […]
A guide to love from a chronic cheater
This Is How You Lose Her is a series of short stories that deal mostly with men’s infidelity in relationships, with the exception of one of the stories being from a women’s point of view. Readers of Diaz’s first book, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, will recognize Yunior, who appears repeatedly in the stories in relationships with different women. A running theme throughout these stories is how men don’t often see women as a real person. Like Yunior’s dog brother, Rafa, who sees […]
Guilt, Pleasure, and Murder
This mystery is part of the Inspector Lynley series, featuring the inspector and his sergeant Barbara Havers. I haven’t read the others in the series, and I’m happy to report that it doesn’t seem to matter. Elizabeth George’s work was recommended by a friend and it was a good recommendation. The tale moved along at a quick pace and featured morally complex characters, which all added up to more than just a clever whodunnit. What I liked most about this story was the inclusion of […]
Actually not that much of a mystery….
Now, as my blog title tells you, I really do read a lot. But it’s an odd gap in my book life that I haven’t read very many Agatha Christie novels. Those I have read, I read when I was in my teens and don’t really remember them anyway. So I decided to address this and read all the Poirot and Marple books, as well as her most famous stand alone novels like And Then There Were None. So what better place to start than at the […]
This is Madness!
Antoinette Cosway, the main character of this novel, is the crazy woman in the attic in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. Rhys imagines the life of Rochester’s first wife and the events that drove her to madness, demonstrating her knowledge and understanding of Jamaican/West Indies history and culture as well as the powerful socio-economic forces that influenced post-Emancipation development there. As Francis Wyndham writes in the introduction, …Rhys knew about the mad Creole heiresses in the early nineteenth century, whose dowries were only an additional burden […]
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