I mentioned in my Ghost Town review that I’d followed that novel up with another ghost story – Ali Smith’s Glyph ( Pantheon Books 2026 – thanks to the publisher for the ARC). Glyph released last week and is the sequel-not-sequel to the 2024 Gliff. I’d say it’s more of a companion – each bookContinue reading “GLYPH – Ali Smith”
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GHOST TOWN – Tom Perrotta
“Ghosts and Orphans. Orphans and Ghosts. The ways we’re abandoned and never left alone.” This quote from Tom Perrotta’s Ghost Town (Scribner 2026) could also apply to the other book I read today, Ali Smith’s Glyph. Stay tuned for that review, but they were certainly interesting to read back-to-back. As for Perotta’s novel, I didn’tContinue reading “GHOST TOWN – Tom Perrotta”
JOHN OF JOHN – Douglas Stuart
“His hands were rough, but the fingers were long and elegant as though God had granted them for a life he had never lived.” “I’m not going to watch you torture yourself and then come round here expecting sympathy for it.” When I reviewed Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain back in 2020, I wrote: “This novelContinue reading “JOHN OF JOHN – Douglas Stuart”
PERMANENCE – Sophie Mackintosh
I didn’t enjoy Erin Somers’s The Ten Year Affair, so the fact her blurb was front and center on Sophie Mackintosh’s novel about an affair caused a momentary pause; however, Permanence (Avid Reader Press) did not suffer from the same “meh” that made me indifferent to the Somers’s novel. It’s an intimate portrayal of anContinue reading “PERMANENCE – Sophie Mackintosh”
RUINS, CHILD – Giada Scodellaro
“In our panic, we see the evidence of rural life – a paragraph on the exposed calf, on the woman’s wrist – a landscape.” Giada Scodellaro’s Ruins, Child (New Directions 2026) was the winner of The Novel Prize, a prize which rewards novels that are innovative and imaginative in form and style. This experimental novel(?)Continue reading “RUINS, CHILD – Giada Scodellaro”
A GOOD PERSON – Kirsten King
Kirsten King’s debut, A Good Person (Putnam 2026), opens with a bang: When I was ten years old, I nearly pushed a girl into a gorilla pen at the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston, Massachusetts. What follows is an unhinged first-person narration by a woman who, after being spurned by the man she was tryingContinue reading “A GOOD PERSON – Kirsten King”
SON OF NOBODY – Yann Martel
“You liked animals, too, Helen. They are dreams made of flesh.” I loved Yann Martel’s Life of Pi. I read it while traveling to Cambodia back in 2003, and that paperback remains one of my most prized possessions. When I run my thumb over the red-dirt stained edges, I’m immediately transported back to when IContinue reading “SON OF NOBODY – Yann Martel”
ORANGE WINE – Esperanza Hope Synder
“Oranges can be sweet or sour,” I answered. “Like love.” Country: ColumbiaTitle: Orange WineAuthor: Esperanza Hope SynderLanguage: EnglishTranslator: N/APublisher: Mareas Books 2025 Esperanza Hope Snyder’s Orange Wine was a bit of a disappointment. It opens with a bang – “While I was giving birth to Lucy, my husband, Alessandro, was lying in bed with my sister Isabel”Continue reading “ORANGE WINE – Esperanza Hope Synder”
TAILBONE – Che Yeun
“The redness in her eyes reminded me of the lipstick she hadn’t worn in a while. I wanted to ask her out to the street vendors again, to eat skewers together, to become two jobless mindless dipshit girls wandering the city together. To feel how surely she took each footstep, how her heels smacked theContinue reading “TAILBONE – Che Yeun”
PYTHON’S KISS – Louise Erdrich
“Flesh would become stone and stone become flesh, and someday they would meet in the mouth of a bird.” Louise Erdrich’s Python’s Kiss (Harper 2026) is a collection of short stories written over the last 20 years, with a number having appeared previously, in slightly different form, in numerous publications. The thirteen stories each haveContinue reading “PYTHON’S KISS – Louise Erdrich”
A Girl Named Tommi 