A review of “All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost” in 100 words by Catherine Stover
What is it like to be a poet? If you have the ideal education, can you make a career of it? This novel shows us four people who attempt to do so. We meet … Read More
Category: fiction
“I always wanted to tell someone.”
A review of “Tell Me Everything” in 100 words by Catherine Stover
Like Pride and Prejudice, this book opens with a lie. It says, “This is the story of Bob Burgess.” The truth is that it’s the story of Bob, Lucy, Olive, Margaret, William, Jim, and Pam and the stories … Read More
“My distress caused, not a darkening of my mind, but an opening of doors on Life, and a seeing of things and people more clearly.”
A review of “The World of Kate Roberts” in 100 words by Catherine Stover
As a writer, few things give me more pleasure than discovering an excellent writer. Kate Roberts wrote her novels, short stories, and autobiography in Welsh, which meant that most of the English-speaking world didn’t know of … Read More
“. . . so much of life carrying smoothly on, despite the tangle of human upsets and the knowledge of how everything must end.”
A review of “So Late in the Day” in 100 words by Catherine Stover
This sentence comes at the end of the first paragraph. We see that while everything seems okay, it’s not. Something has ended, and the protagonist is upset. Keegan is reluctant to spell it out for us. … Read More
“It’s the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption.”
A review of “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” in 100 words by Catherine Stover
The title of this novel comes from a gut-wrenching scene in Macbeth, where the central character mourns his wife’s death and wants his now-meaningless existence to come to an end. (And it does. Violently.) Is … Read More
“I think I’ve figured out why people have to die – they really like the past best.”
A review of “Jennie’s Tiger” in 100 words by Catherine Stover
Eva Gayle Six is an American author of historical fiction that few have heard of. Her novel, Jennie’s Tiger: A woman’s pioneering stand in an untamed corner of Washington state, is based on the life of Jennie Wooding, born … Read More
“It would be the easiest thing in the world to lose everything.”
A Review of “Small Thing Like These” in 100 Words by Catherine Stover
This quote expresses the tension in Small Things Like These, which is about the terrible choice the Irish coal merchant, Furlong, must make between self-preservation and self-respect. Either way, he stands a chance to lose something … Read More
“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
A review of “Requiem for a Nun” in 100 words by Catherine Stover
This is one of my favorite lines in American literature. It’s blunt and clear, even though it’s from a book that is neither blunt nor clear. Reading Requiem for a Nun requires participating in an experiment. It … Read More
Why read Alice Munro?
In the weeks since Alice Munro’s death, I’ve been thinking about this paradox: While she won the Nobel Prize and the highest respect of reviewers, she never won the hearts of the mass market audience. Why? Hmmm . . . should we start by thinking about the reasons we are … Read More
“Every story has a moral, Doherty used to say, but most have more than two.”
Here is what I love about the pieces in this book: they are designed to surprise the reader. The stories build to not just one revelation, but often several. And they are sneaky. The last sentence of the last story made me gasp out loud. Because it was written with … Read More
“I’ve sometimes wondered whether novelists like to be remembered for what they’ve said or because they’ve said it in their own particular way – in their own distinctive voice.”
In 1978, the BBC invited Barbara Pym to be a guest on its program where well-known writers discussed their work. Her views on the “distinctive voice” of a writer was of particular interest: in the 1960s, her publisher declined her seventh novel because he said her style was “old fashioned.” … Read More
“I don’t think you’re dying, ” I said. “I think you’ve just got a touch of cancer.”
What’s the hardest book to write successfully? For me, it would be a novel about teenagers who have cancer, fall in love, and then die. The challenges include: creating a page-turner (even though the readers know how it will end), having the characters be interesting but not unrealistically heroic, using … Read More
Ten Years of Writing about Fiction Has Taught Me This
Fiction is the wildest form of writing. It attracts explorers, artists, and fighters. Their goals might be to punch a hole in the wall between the writer and the reader (Knausgaard), or tell us how the idea of equality fell short (Whitehead), or show us how … Read More
“Memories are then replaced by different joys and sorrows, and unbelievably . . . you are positive that this is all you’ve ever wanted in the world.”
This novel makes us ask: which versions of our memories are to be believed? Is it really true that the protagonist has all that she’s ever wanted? Is she hiding something? From whom? I disagree with the reviewer who described this novel as “bucolically simple.” What about the reference to … Read More
“Where does the road to ruin start?”
This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is written as a recovery journal by a young man in Appalachia who was born to a single mother experiencing addiction. It’s the story that author Barbara Kingsolver wanted to write for years because every family she knows in her part of Appalachia has lost … Read More