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Tag: fiction

Review: Peaces, Helen Oyeyemi

Ordinarily I would start a review by describing the book’s premise, but Helen Oyeyemi’s Peaces, like so many of her books, resists the idea of a “premise.” As time goes on and Helen Oyeyemi approaches a Helen Oyeyemi singularity, it becomes harder and harder to encapsulate her books into anything as mundane as a “premise.” There is a train; some newlyweds and their pet mongoose are traveling on the train; things go a bit wrong. Former Oyeyemi premises include: A male author writes a lot of female deaths; things go a bit wrong. Twins live in a haunted house; things…

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The Moonflower Vine, Jetta Carleton

Tara read this book late last year, and she said she was shocked by the turns the book took, which, y’all, if you are ever trying to convince me to read a book?  Shocked is a good adjective to use.  Family saga will get you nowhere.  I cannot at present think of any family sagas I have read and disliked (or any I have read and liked, actually), but I have conceived a violent prejudice against them.  In this case, Tara said both shocked and family saga, and shocked won out.  Sometimes that happens. And now that shocked no longer…

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Giles Goat-Boy, John Barth

This book and I got off to a rocky start. Last time I was at the library, I picked up a bunch of books that I thought might be good, by authors who are all those weird fantasy realists and postmodern and metafictiony. I got the rest of Salman Rushdie’s books that I haven’t read – except, annoyingly enough, The Satanic Verses, which is the one I wanted to read first because I was pretty sure I was going to like it the least – and I got several books by Italo Calvino, and I got Giles Goat-Boy by John…

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