Rebecca Makkai – Page 3 – Cannonball Read 17

Another book-club-recommended-rip-your-heart-out read

The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai

March 8, 2020 by cheerbrarian Leave a Comment

Neither this book nor Rebecca Makkai was on my radar but this is the March selection of the ANUW (Association for Northwestern University Women) book club and they have never steered me wrong before. This book club is the reason I read Hillbilly Elegy, Between the World and Me, the Crazy Rich Asians trilogy, and Radium Girls (and if you haven’t read these, add them all to your “to read” pile! Anyhoo, I digress. The Great Believers was another in the long line of books […]

The During and After

The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai

June 11, 2019 by Lisa Bee Leave a Comment

Happy Pride month, y’all! Our library has a wonderful little feature display of LGBT+ books, and go figure, the last thing I just returned ended up immediately on it, as well as this book here being something that could easily be featured on it. And a great book it is, in my opinion! If, perhaps, quite an emotional one, given the often difficult-but-important subject matter. And I wanted to read something like this right now as I parse through some complicated personal feelings regarding Pride […]

Episode 1-28: Time Keeps On Slipping, Slipping, Slipping

July 30, 2018 by prisco Leave a Comment

https://killingmykindle.com/2018/07/30/episode-1-28-time-keeps-on-slipping-slipping-slipping/ Wherein I review: 108. The October List by Jeffery Deaver 109. The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai 110. Invitation to a Bonfire by Adrienne Celt A mystery that starts with the last chapter and works its way backwards. One book that jumps between 1985 and 2015 between Chicago and Paris while straddling the AIDS epidemic. One book told through journal entries and letters from an author while reimagining the Nabokov love triangle. I loved them all in their own little ways, but I loved […]

A Hundred Years of Secrets

November 13, 2014 by alwaysanswerb Leave a Comment

Goodreads summary: “Meet the Devohrs: Zee, a Marxist literary scholar who detests her parents’ wealth but nevertheless finds herself living in their carriage house; Gracie, her mother, who claims she can tell your lot in life by looking at your teeth; and Bruce, her step-father, stockpiling supplies for the Y2K apocalypse and perpetually late for his tee time. Then there’s Violet Devohr, Zee’s great-grandmother, who they say took her own life somewhere in the vast house, and whose massive oil portrait still hangs in the […]

Artists + Ghosts = Good Story

August 11, 2014 by ElCicco Leave a Comment

This is a place where people aren’t so much haunted by their pasts as they are unknowingly hurtled toward specific and inexorable destinations. And perhaps it feels like a haunting. But it’s a pull, not a push. The Hundred-Year House is the fictional story of an artists’ colony called Laurelfield, just outside Chicago near Lake Michigan. In the afterward, Makkai writes that one theme is the need artists have for community. Other themes would be the masks that people wear, hiding themselves from even those […]

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