Category: fiction

“He was committing the beginner’s error of inserting his own agenda into the poem, instead of drawing elements out of the poem and then cautiously blowing on them until they started to flame.”

This sentence made me stop to wonder if Knausgaard was telling his readers they shouldn’t come to his novel with an agenda for what it should be like. If so, that’s a good start. I would go further, though, and say that this book is not for those who expect … Read More

“To cause paralyzing anxiety, is the dream of power. . .”

Is this true?  To have power, do you need to make everyone feel anxious?  According to the author of this essay about Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the answer is “Absolutely.”  The play is about an exiled Duke who wants to return to power, even though he has no army, … Read More

“It’s the kind of room that makes me hate the world.”

What an experiment — a novel with no plot, about a woman whose name we don’t know, set in an unidentified location. It’s a collection of descriptions of how the protagonist responds to her surroundings. NPR compared the book to “slow cooking” that requires patience. The New York Times… Read More

“She felt that surely she hadn’t done every single thing wrong.”

Of course, this character – Astrid – had not done every single thing wrong. But, after watching someone she had known for 40 years get hit by a bus (literally), she suddenly faced the fact that she had made plenty of mistakes and had done things she had regretted. So … Read More

“Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?”

What makes this book a bestseller? Clearly, the sad “if only I had…..” theme of the book resonates with many people during a year when mental health issues are skyrocketing.  Perhaps more importantly, the novel is written by someone who has lived the experience he is writing about. The … Read More

“No way those girls could have turned out halfway normal.”

“Those girls” are the Vignes twins, who at a very young age, saw five white men lynching their black father. The neighbors predicted that the girls couldn’t be “right” afterwards, and indeed, both girls went on to make many questionable choices. This novel — a bestseller — appeared on many … Read More

“Wasn’t it dreadful? I almost hoped somebody might stand up at the back of the church and forbid the marriage – like in Jane Eyre…”

The vicar’s wife continues, “…and expose John as an imposter. I wanted it to happen, and not only for Ianthe’s good.” Wow! What a confession! The vicar’s wife – who we thought should be friends with Ianthe – disapproved of her marriage to John. Why? She thought John was, … Read More

Best 2020 Book Prescriptions

If 2020 was a great year for you, stop reading.  This blog post is not for you.  If, however, 2020 presented you with some real challenges, and you are looking for some prescriptions in the form of book recommendations, here we go:

Worst year ever? If you are wondering if … Read More

“Wasn’t memory, that bully and oppressor, supposed to become soft and spongy?”

What if you found out that many of your memories were either wrong or incomplete? Maybe you would have the same disconcerted feeling that I had when I first saw the cover of this book.  It’s a picture of someone diving head-first into a large body of water – but … Read More

“Sometimes when he was dealing with people, he felt like he was operating one of those claw machines . . . where you tried to scoop up a prize but the controls were too unwieldly…”

If you could ask one novelist to write a story about your life, who would you pick?  For me, it would be Anne Tyler, whose power lies in her ability to capture both truth and humanity in profound metaphors.  For example, the main character in this novel is a runner … Read More

“Let me hasten to add that I am not at all like Jane Eyre, who must have given hope to so many plain women . . .nor have I ever thought of myself as being like her.”

When I read about “the unexpected joy of repeat experiences” during difficult times, I immediately thought of the pleasure I have in rereading novels by Barbara Pym.  Surely one of the ways we can cope with the stress of an international pandemic is to seek out the company of … Read More

“There lay a man, flat on this back, his left leg turned grotesquely forward from the knee. His eyes and mouth wide open.”

On page 22 of Where the Crawdads Sing, we discover that Chase Andrews is dead.  Was it an accident or a murder? While that’s the question that drives the plot, my main question was: why was this book “the” sensation of 2019?  It has sold four-and-a-half million copies and has … Read More

“Silence surrounded her as she waited.”

In Olive, Again there is a lot of waiting and a lot of people dying. And yet, there is an underlying sense of urgency as the main characters struggle to figure things out, which is difficult work because it’s clear that they have more regrets than triumphs.  This is Elizabeth … Read More

Best Books of 2019: Five Favorites

Here are the five books I’ve recommended most frequently in 2019:

Novel: It appears that Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House is on every “Best of 2019” list. What makes it so appealing? In addition to having likable, open-hearted characters in an interesting situation — which we can expect from Patchett … Read More

“There are a few times in life when you leap up and the past that you’d been standing on falls away behind you . . .”

Ann Patchett continues “…and the future you mean to land on is not yet in place, and for a moment you’re suspended, knowing nothing and no one, not even yourself.” This is the protagonist’s description of how his life as a teenager changed when his father died.  There are many … Read More