The Girl From Guernica by Karen Robards
I don’t recall why any longer, but the other day something sent me down a Kindle rabbit hole search for a specific Karen Robards book. There was a point in time when Ms. Robards was an automatic purchase for me – if I saw a new book on the rack at the grocery store or at Barnes & Noble, in the basket it went. Like many authors from the late 90s and early aughts for which I had this habit, she kind of fell off […]
Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
CBR 14 BINGO: Shadow, because it deals with shedding light on the truth, which is not always what it seems Code Name Verity has been sitting patiently on my TBR for close to 10 years (having first been published in 2012). I snatched it out of a Little Free Library and thought it would be the perfect entry for the Shadow category in this year’s bingo. Reviewing this novel without giving away any spoilers is a little difficult, but not impossible if I focus on […]
Some Luck by Jane Smiley
I really enjoy this book and I think this is my second or third time reading it. Some Luck follows the Langdon family, who start off as farmers in Iowa. Each chapter is one year in their lives, and that concept makes this book very readable, as it moves along at a fast pace. This is the first book in a trilogy and covers 1920 to 1953. I think the thing that makes this book more than a gimmick is Jane Smiley’s beautiful prose — there are […]
The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan
Nothing endures. Don’t you see, Bonox? That’s what Kipling meant. Not empires, not memories. We remember nothing. Maybe for a year or two. Maybe most of a life, if we live. Maybe. But then we will die, and who will ever understand any of this? And maybe we remember nothing most of all when we put our hands on our hearts and carry on about not forgetting. On the face of it, the plot of The Narrow Road to the Deep North is about war: […]
The Things We Cannot Say by Kelly Rimmer
I’ve read some excellent historical fiction recently featuring strong female leads, and this novel had the potential to join those ranks. It’s certainly very popular on Goodreads, with many readers noting how it made them cry, so I feel rather like a grinch giving this a mild, three-star review, just on the positive side of a thumbs up. The story has potential and does feature interesting characters. Nevertheless, I was let down by the execution. The novel alternates between two timelines. In pre-World War II Poland, […]
