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Category: 3 Stars

Review: Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, Helen Simonson

Have I told y’all how much I like my work colleagues? Well I do. They are such lovely, funny, cool, interesting people. Work Jenny is the one who alerts us all to things like the Treats Truck, free ice cream, Puppy Bowl, and news stories featuring hot Navy SEALS (“Guys, this is a tragedy, but this guy’s back is out of control); and she lent me Major Pettigrew Lives for a Day’s Last Stand (look, that is confusing right there, don’t tell me I’m the only one who’s made that mistake) after I expressed a passing interest in reading it.…

36 Comments

Review: Under the Harrow, Mark Dunn

If I may steal a locution from the Fug Girls: MarkDunnily played, Mark Dunn. Mark Dunn, as some of you may recall, is the author of Ella Minnow Pea, a delightfully clever satire that avoided the many pitfalls of a comic novel and utterly charmed me in the process. (Short version: It’s an epistolary novel in which letters of the alphabet gradually become verboten, so that the book in its later stages must do without half the alphabet.) Under the Harrow, Dunn’s most recent novel, overcomes its slightly cliched story using sheer charm and thoroughness of invention. The valley of…

13 Comments

Review: All Clear, Connie Willis

Both these things are true: I liked and felt satisfied with All Clear, the second of two books about time-traveling Oxford historians who get stuck in Britain in World War II; and, it is perfectly possible I will never read another book by Connis Willis. Blackout left us on a cliffhanger. Eileen, Polly, and Mike, three Oxford historians from the future, are trapped in London in World War II. Their drops did not open to return them to Oxford, and their Oxford retrieval teams never showed up. They have begun to fear that they have accidentally changed history, that England…

36 Comments

Review: The White Devil, Justin Evans

It is never fair to finish up a book you liked a lot/loved (in this case, The Secret History — despite my best intentions of early bed, I stayed up past until midnight to finish it this past rereading time), and turn straight away to a book you haven’t read before that sounds vaguely similar. You’re going to compare them, and even though your rational mind knows that they are not in competition, one of them is going to lose out. However, there were a few things working to shield The White Devil from the inevitable failure when compared to…

17 Comments

Review: Strangers at the Feast, Jennifer Vanderbes

The beginning: Strangers at the Feast (affiliate links: Amazon, B&N, Book Depository) is about a family getting together for Thanksgiving dinner. Scholar Ginny has rebounded from a bad relationship by semi-legally adopting an Indian orphan called Priya, and she wants to bring her family together to meet Priya. The family is Ginny’s brother Doug, who has lost significant money since the housing crisis, and his wife Denise, and Doug and Ginny’s parents, old-school matriarch Eleanor and Gavin, a Vietnam veteran who missed out on his dreams as he worked to provide for his family. In a plotline across town, two…

19 Comments

Review: The Husbands and Wives Club, Laurie Abraham

I wish there were a whole section of the bookstore called “Journalists go do something really interesting and then write a whole book about it,” and it would include The Unlikely Disciple and Mystics, Mavericks, and Merrymakers, and this book I want to read called Turkmeniscam, and it would also include The Husbands and Wives Club, which is the book that came out of Laurie Abraham’s sitting in on a couples therapy group. I got this for Indie Sister for her birthday, but didn’t have time to read it before mailing it off to her. Next time I should give…

22 Comments

Review: Serenity: The Shepherd’s Tale, the Brothers Whedon

Okay, nobody really calls them the Brothers Whedon. But perhaps they should. The Shepherd’s Tale is the story of Shepherd Book from Firefly. If you are not a fan of Firefly, what the hell, dude? Why are you reading this review instead of watching Firefly from start to finish? I’m only going to spoil it anyway so you might as well trot along and watch it. I promise it will be worth your time. If you are a fan of Firefly, you are probably aware that Shepherd Derrial Book is a man with a mysterious past. From his keen knowledge…

40 Comments

Review: The Oracle of Stamboul, Michael David Lukas

And magical realism rears its ugly — no, I’m kidding. The Oracle of Stamboul has the tiniest ever amount of magical realism, actually the perfect amount. At the start of the story, when our protagonist Eleonora is about to be born, the author mentions a flock of hoopoes (they look like this, if you’re curious) that comes to settle near her house on the night of her birth. After that, I was on red alert, as my displeasure with an excess of magical realism is rapid and permanent. But first-time author Michael David Lukas has a light touch with the…

27 Comments