“For when Amina chose to leave her home and return to life at sea, she became more than a pirate. More than a witch. She became a legend.” A female pirate retired to a life of single-motherhood and relative domesticity takes to the sea for one more daring adventure? Sign me up. From the momentContinue reading “THE ADVENTURES OF AMINA AL-SIRAFI – Shannon Chakraborty”
Tag Archives: 2023 release
THE BERRY PICKERS – Amanda Peters
“…lost in a memory stirred alive by the moon.” Amanda Peters’s debut The Berry Pickers (Catapult 2023) is a quiet triumph of a novel about grief, anger, loss, identity, and forgiveness. When I was a child, I asked for The Face on the Milk Carton for Christmas. (It’s one of a few books I rememberContinue reading “THE BERRY PICKERS – Amanda Peters”
LADY TAN’S CIRCLE OF WOMEN – Lisa See
“Do you need a man to confirm what your body is already telling you to be true?” Set in 1469-1511, Lisa See’s Lady Tan’s Circle of Women (Scribner 2023) is a remarkable story of a high-status woman doctor, her midwife best friend, and an assortment of women from whom she draws strength, courage, and goodContinue reading “LADY TAN’S CIRCLE OF WOMEN – Lisa See”
LET US DESCEND – Jesmyn Ward
“The first weapon I ever held was my mother’s hand.” Let Us Descend (Scribner 2023) is my first Jesmyn Ward novel, but it certainly won’t be my last. Ward’s writing is as lush and powerful as everyone says, and there is a cadence to the storytelling that echoes oral traditions centuries old. The novel isContinue reading “LET US DESCEND – Jesmyn Ward”
THE END OF WORLD IS A CUL DE SAC – Louise Kennedy
I called Louise Kennedy’s Trespasses a “weeping wound of a novel about womanhood, love, and family” in my 3/30/2023 review, and her collection of stories, The End of the World is a Cul de Sac (Riverhead 2023, expected 12/5/2023; first published in Great Britain by Bloomsbury Publishing in 2021) is a series of festering woundsContinue reading “THE END OF WORLD IS A CUL DE SAC – Louise Kennedy”
SILVER ALERT – Lee Smith
After I finished Backman’s novella, I still had several hours left of travel. Enter Lee Smith’s Silver Alert (Algonquin 2023), which I downloaded on Libby. A North Carolina resident, Smith’s writing vibrates and roars with the Southern gothic and grotesque – the voices her writing bring to life echo Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner, loudContinue reading “SILVER ALERT – Lee Smith”
THE LONG GAME – Elena Armas
Small North Carolina town. Girls little league soccer team. Goats. Cute cover. Slow burn of an “enemies to lovers” between two out of towners tasked with saving the soccer team. I thought The Long Game by Elena Armas (Atria 2023) would be the perfect candy book. If you’ve been here any amount of time, youContinue reading “THE LONG GAME – Elena Armas”
HOW TO BUILD A BOAT – Elaine Feeney
“Cross imaginary boundaries, let go throw paint, sing cut a tree and empty it out, plant again find something hard but delicate, watch spaces for tension, be near it, but not in it, think. Design, redesign, build from what you have, you have so much already.” My thoughts on this year’s Booker longlist aren’t reallyContinue reading “HOW TO BUILD A BOAT – Elaine Feeney”
THE HOUSE OF DOORS – Tan Twan Eng
“Where does a story begin, Willie?” I asked. For a while he did not say anything. Then he shifted in his chair. “Where does a wave on the ocean begin?” he said. “Where does it form a welt on the skin of the sea, to swell and expand and rush towards shore?” “I want to tell youContinue reading “THE HOUSE OF DOORS – Tan Twan Eng”
TONIGHT, I BURN – Katherine J. Adams
Katharine J. Adams’s debut novel, Tonight, I Burn, (Orbit – expected 7 Nov 2023) echoes with legends, fairytales and folklore that came before. While I heard Hades and Persephone and Beauty and the Beast the most; I wouldn’t call this a retelling of either. Adams is a reader first, and it shows beautifully in herContinue reading “TONIGHT, I BURN – Katherine J. Adams”
A Girl Named Tommi 