The final installment of a series is a trap. The writer is pursuing a set of goals which, though they are not fundamentally incompatible with each other, would probably not receive much encouragement from the OK Cupid algorithm to send each other a flirty message. The stakes have to be high but can’t be stakes the characters have already faced and overcome in previous books; the resolution has to be victory but can’t be too deus ex machina; and the characters have to end on a note that acknowledges everything they have been through but also feels conclusive and not…
23 CommentsTag: British cover wins
Oh wonderful Attica Locke! If only I had read The Cutting Season after Difficult Men rather than before! Attica Locke would have been a wonderful antidote to the maddening failure of representation. The protagonist of The Cutting Season (affiliate links: Amazon, B&N, Book Depository), Caren Gray, has come back to work and live at the Louisiana plantation where her mother was a cook and her multi-great grandparents were slaves. She manages all of the plantation operations, from tours (complete with a rose-colored play about antebellum life at Belle Vie) to events — Belle Vie is a popular location for weddings…
17 CommentsNote: I received a copy of Falling into the Fire from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. In her review of Falling into the Fire earlier this year, Victoria said “I begin to wonder whether there is an entry in the DSM (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) for readers like me, who find themselves fascinated by accounts of people struggling with the different illnesses it defines.” If there is, I surely have it, and I could not resist asking Penguin for a copy of this psychiatrist’s account of some of her most severely ill patients at…
5 CommentsLong before reading Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked (affiliate links: Amazon, B&N, Book Depository), I read this article Lasdun wrote about acquiring a female stalker he calls Nasreen, and this discussion in Guernica Magazine between Lasdun and another writer who was targeted by Nasreen. (I was glad the second article existed because I like to have independent confirmation when there is a case as ugly and inexplicable as this one.) Nasreen was a student in a creative writing course Lasdun taught, and they corresponded by email for some time after. Nasreen’s emails became increasingly frequent and obsessive,…
25 CommentsThe beginning: In Life after Life, a woman called Ursula takes out a gun to shoot Hitler. At once we are flashed back to the day of her birth, when she dies from having the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. But Ursula is not a regular child. She gets to try again. The second time around, the doctor arrives in time to save her with a pair of surgical scissors, and she survives to live a regular life. Again and again throughout her childhood, Ursula dies, and dies, and dies again. Always she gets another try at life. She…
21 CommentsAw, y’all, thanks for pointing me in the direction of this book. I would never have known about it if the blogosphere hadn’t all jumped up and down shouting “LOOK HERE AT THIS,” so as ever, I am indebted to you for your bookfinding awesomeness. The beginning: Sophie lives in an occupied French town during World War I, and she and her sister and brother are struggling to get by. When the Kommandant of the German regiment sees a portrait of Sophie, painted by her husband, he begins to take an interest in them, an interest that could prove…
12 CommentsThe beginning: Two war wives in the midst of World war II, one pregnant, one with a husband and son both away at war, begin corresponding with each other. Through their letters, they become very dear friends, exchanging recipes, sympathy, and prayers for each other. At first, I thought I’ll Be Seeing You (affiliate links: Amazon, B&N, Book Depository) was a very by-the-numbers homefront of World War II book. To some extent, it is. The women talk about missing their menfolk; Rita finds out that her son was sort of seeing a nondescript woman at the local bar, which…
4 CommentsThe beginning: A man called Ben, separated from his wife, has come to Greece for three months to get away from his life in Oxford. For a while he works at a meat grill in Athens, but a chance meeting with a colleague gets him a job on an excavation at Sparta, an excavation populated with a group of strange, unfriendly, exclusive people. The end (no spoilers): I had it in my head that this book was like a cross between a Carol Goodman novel and The Secret History. The eternity Ben spends in Athens as a waiter or whatever…
16 Comments