Edna O’Brien’s “The Little Red Chairs” is a disturbing yet compelling account of the direct and peripheral impact of a charismatic genocidist. Beautifully written, the book takes its title from the 11,541 red chairs laid out in rows in Sarajevo on April 6, 2012, to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the siege of Sarajevo by
Nobody’s Fool – by Richard Russo
Richard Russo’s most recent novel, “Everybody’s Fool,” was just released. It is a sequel to a book he published in 1993 called “Nobody’s Fool”. I thought I should read Nobody’s Fool before I read Everybody’s Fool and so this is my review of Nobody’s Fool.
In Nobody’s Fool, the main character, Donald Sullivan (Sully) is
A Strangeness In My Mind – by Orhan Pamuk
To say that Orhan Pamuk’s “A Strangeness In My Mind” is one of the best written and enjoyable books I have read all year is overshadowed by my embarrassment that it is the first of the Nobel Prize winner’s novels that I have read. Believe me I will be going back and devouring all of
My Vacation
Guess what readers? I am going on vacation! “What” you might say? “Why are you telling us this and why do we care? We’re not going on vacation and we don’t really want to hear about you having fun in the sun”–or something like that.
I am telling you because I will be gone for
The American Lover – by Rose Tremain
“The American Lover” is a collection of 13 short stories with certain common themes and moods. There are no happy stories in the collection and the commonality includes stories depicting parent child relationships, parental expectations and disappointments, misguided and disloyal love, the cruelty of nature, World War II and wasted and beleaguered lives. Yet despite
LaRose – by Louise Erdich
“We are chased by things done to us in this life…We are chased by what we do to others and then in turn what they do to us. We’re always looking behind us, or worried about what comes next. We only have this teeny moment. Oops, it’s gone.”
LaRose, by Louise Erdrich, is a story
The Man Without A Shadow – by Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates, a prolific writer, has a very distinctive style and her books address societal issues in a consistent and often disturbing manner. Her story lines usually address issues of gender inequality, include some sort of sexual impropriety and the lead character frequently devolves into mental illness. These are the JCO constants which revolve
The Sympathizer – by Viet Thanh Nguyen
It seems as though there have been a lot of first novels lately; maybe there always have been and I have just been oblivious. Viet Thanh Nguyen’s “The Sympathizer”, winner of the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Award for Excellence in Fiction, is a good one, so long as you do not mind vivid descriptions of
The Mark and the Void – by Paul Murray
Every so often you read a book that is just a puzzler. It was good; it was bad; it was everything in between. I just cannot make up my mind. That is how I feel about Paul Murray’s “The Mark and the Void.” Ireland’s fictional approximation of The Big Short, it has elements of reality
Mrs. Engels – by Gavin McCrea
“Mrs. Engels”, a first novel by Gavin McCrea, is a fictional account of a three year period (1870-1873)(as well as some flashbacks) in the lives of the authors of the Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels), told from the perspective of Friedrich Engels’ wife, Lizzie Burns.
Lizzie and her sister, Mary, Irish by