I’ve been dragging my feet over this review, and I contemplated not even posting. But I remembered I posted about How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps her House, and that novel left me, as a reader, with the same sort of feeling as Latoya Watkins’s Perish (Tiny Reparations Books 2022). I’m actually going to recycle partContinue reading “PERISH – Latoya Watkins”
Tag Archives: 2022 release
REMARKABLY BRIGHT CREATURES – Shelby Van Pelt
Shelby Van Pelt’s Remarkably Bright Creatures (HarperCollins 2022) has been hanging out on my TBR stack for well over a year. It’s moved from one stack to another, but I kept choosing something else. I suppose I didn’t want to be let down by yet another overhyped book. Long story short: I wasn’t. Short storyContinue reading “REMARKABLY BRIGHT CREATURES – Shelby Van Pelt”
THE OGRESS AND THE ORPPHANS – Kelly Barnhill
“But it’s best you know this now, at the beginning of this book. Every story has a villain, after all. And every villain has a story.” Kelly Barnhill is an absolute gift to literature, and not just children’s lit. She’s another one of my “heart hug” authors, but her hugs come in the form ofContinue reading “THE OGRESS AND THE ORPPHANS – Kelly Barnhill”
FAIRY TALE – Stephen King
I’ve been reading Stephen King since the mid-nineties – devouring his works when I was in middle and high school. (My senior picture is of me reading The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon.) My favorites are Bag of Bones and Desperation, but I also have a special love for The Tommyknockers (which may or mayContinue reading “FAIRY TALE – Stephen King”
IF I SURVIVE YOU – Jonathan Escoffery
“Tell him – across the expanse of time and distance, as I am telling you now – all that I can’t say to him. Start with the resentment and the feelings of neglect and your resulting recklessness. Recount every injury, every scar you carve into each other. And when you’re finished, and you are certainContinue reading “IF I SURVIVE YOU – Jonathan Escoffery”
A DANGEROUS BUSINESS – Jane Smiley
Jane Smiley’s A Dangerous Business (Knopf 2022) was published in December of last year, but I just got around to reading the uncorrected proof the publisher sent. I know Smiley is a phenomenal writer – Horse Heaven and A Thousand Acres are two powerful novels that highlight that talent – but A Dangerous Business wasContinue reading “A DANGEROUS BUSINESS – Jane Smiley”
THE MANY DAUGHTERS OF AFONG MOY – Jamie Ford
“A woman carries her fear inside of her.” Jamie Ford’s The Many Daughters of Afong Moy (Atria Books 2022) is an intriguing approach to inherited trauma. Epigenetic inheritance is at the core of Ford’s novel, and the science as well as case studies are absolutely fascinating. Set primarily in 2045, but timeline hopping from 1836Continue reading “THE MANY DAUGHTERS OF AFONG MOY – Jamie Ford”
THE ATTIC CHILD – Lola Jaye
“Until the lions have their own histories, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” – African proverb, quoted by Chinua Achebe in “The Art of Fiction,” The Paris Review, no. 139 Lola Jaye writes in the author’s note of The Attic Child (William Morrow 2022) that the novel is her “attempt toContinue reading “THE ATTIC CHILD – Lola Jaye”
PART OF YOUR WORLD – Abby Jimenez
“If you have a baby goat, you always lead with ‘I have a baby goat.’” Brimming with Disney references and its own kind of magic, Abby Jimenez’s Part of Your World (Grand Central Publishing 2022) is the sweetest kind of romance. If you’ve been here for a bit, you know I don’t typically do romance. Continue reading “PART OF YOUR WORLD – Abby Jimenez”
THE BANDIT QUEENS – Parini Shroff
“She’d first eaten her father’s salt, then her husband’s; it was time to eat her own.” “If she was this lonely, Geeta berated herself, she should get a damn dog.” Take “Goodbye Earl” (or, more recently, Taylor Swift’s take on the same theme with “No Body, No Crime”), set it in India and change MaryContinue reading “THE BANDIT QUEENS – Parini Shroff”
A Girl Named Tommi 