I really enjoyed J. Courtney Sullivan’s Saints for All Occassions so I looked for some of her previous work. Maine follows a similar pattern- middle class Irish Catholic matriarchal family on the East coast with family drama bursting at the seams. Alice Kelleher’s husband, Daniel, won the land their beloved summer home sits on in a bet decades ago; Daniel is long gone and Alice has decided to donate their home to the local church after her death. Her donation is penance for a secret she’s kept for decades, […]
A quaint little murder mystery, but did anyone actually get murdered?
Ok so this was another one of my random pickups at the library. It had death in the title, so I figured I’d like it. I think I did? It was an audiobook, so the fact that it felt like I was being read to by a little old lady really soothed me. No offense to Cynthia Darlow, I have no idea how old she is, but she sounded to me like a little old lady. I mean that in the best way possible. This […]
You’ll write many stories, but every one will be to some greater or lesser degree about this story.
I am, in all honesty and with true sincerity, starting to question reality. Remember when I read The Drawing of the Three (Dark Tower #2) and complained that King needs an editor because he shouldn’t be referring to his own work (the film version of The Shining) as content experienced by new characters in this totally different world? And then I read Wizard and Glass (Dark Tower #4) and I was like, “TUBE NECK HOW DARE YOU?!” but then totally turned around on it, and […]
Star Wormwood blazes and each one of you that steps out that door will be torn apart!
Stephen King and I are still in love! My introduction this year to his writing involved some seriously epic shit, with It and The Stand, and now I get to The Mist, and it’s super short, and takes place over 2 days, and doesn’t actually end? Gah. I’m not saying I’m unsatisfied; I’m actually mostly saying that I’m glad that I did this one when I did it, because now there’s a whole new King to love. The man is super prolific, so I’m delighted that […]
Starring Kojak, formerly known as Big Steve, a Very Good Dog
My blossoming love affair with Stephen King continues, with yet another behemoth of awesomeness: The Stand. This particular edition was released in 1990, twelve years after the first release. It was updated and expanded, and I have no reference to the first edition but, according to “Publisher’s Weekly,” at least as quoted on amazon.com, “The same excellent tale of the walking dude, the chemical warfare weapon called superflu and the confrontation between its survivors has been updated to 1990, so references to Teenage Mutant Ninja […]
Portrait of an Ordinary Woman
Olive Kitteridge is a book about folks in Crosby, Maine, basically a collection of short stories that amount to a (light) novel. Each story is about someone in Crosby, Maine–sometimes Olive is the main character, and sometimes she makes an appearance as a supporting character or even in someone’s memory. Olive is a sourpuss middle-aged lady, big-boned and no-nonsense. She’s described by different characters as scary, large, imposing, and she knows these things about herself with a kind of partial self-awareness that felt extremely familiar. […]