In Barbara Kingsolver’s Unsheltered, a family in crisis confronts the new realities of a changing world. … More Surviving in Changing Times: Unsheltered, by Barbara Kingsolver
I have a condition where I want to like Alan Hollinghurst’s writing more than I actually do. The Line of Beauty was fine, but my opinion of it was helped by a BBC adaptation that smoothed out a lot of the areas I found problematic in the book itself–namely that there was something inaccessible about it. … More A Gay Multigenerational Saga: The Sparsholt Affair, by Alan Hollinghurst
“It came, over and over, down to this: What made someone a mother? Was it biology alone, or was it love?” In Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ng makes great use of the town she grew up in, Shaker Heights. A meticulously planned suburban sprawl, Shaker Heights becomes a sort of stand-in for the way life tends … More What Makes a Mother? Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng
It’s rare that a book makes me laugh out loud AND cry. The Heart’s Invisible Furies did both. … More Coming of Age (and Coming Out) in a Changing Ireland: The Heart’s Invisible Furies, by John Boyne
A failed artist struggles to grow up and put the pieces of her life back together as her family faces an emotional ordeal she isn’t mature enough to handle. … More All Grown Up, by Jami Attenberg: #BookReview
The Association of Small Bombs begins with a sudden explosion in a Delhi marketplace in 1996. Two young brothers, Tushar and Nakul Khurana, are killed. Their friend Mansoor Ahmed survives. The novel then follows what happens over the next twenty years in order to show the ripple effect that this “small bomb” has. Tushar and … More A Culture of Violence: The Association of Small Bombs, by Karan Mahajan: Book Review
“Every immigrant is the person he might have been and the person he is” Charles Wang left China for the American dream and made it big. He’s been living it up ever since and he has the vain, empty, emotionally distant family to prove it. But now he’s lost everything in the financial crisis of … More Rising China and the Dashed American Dream: The Wangs vs. the World
