“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”
Tag Archives: Fiction
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”
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”
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”
YESTERYEAR – Caro Claire Burke
“This is the last day of the life I imagined for myself.” Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear (Knopf 2026) is certainly one of the buzziest books of the year. Buzzy books can be hit or miss for me, so I was already approaching it from the standpoint that it probably wouldn’t live up to the hype.Continue reading “YESTERYEAR – Caro Claire Burke”
THE SEVEN DAUGHTERS OF DUPREE – Nikesha Elise Williams
“Everything don’t need to be voiced. Everything don’t need to grow wings, ride the air, and visit folk you don’t know with stories they got no stake it.” “She knew some deceptions deserved the dirt.” In the vein of The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois comes Nikesha Elise Williams’s The Seven Daughters of DupreeContinue reading “THE SEVEN DAUGHTERS OF DUPREE – Nikesha Elise Williams”
THE FOUNTAIN – Casey Scieszka
“She touches the barrel to her chin, to her temple, back to her chin. She braces herself for the shock of it. She hopes for the thousandth time, millionth time, for some relief.” Emma Straub called Casey Scieszka’s debut novel, The Fountain (Harper 2026), “like Tuck Everlasting for grown-ups,” and that perfectly sums up thisContinue reading “THE FOUNTAIN – Casey Scieszka”
NONESUCH – Francis Spufford
“Tell me where all past years are…” Francis Spufford’s Nonesuch (Scribner 2026) was one of my anticipated releases of 2026. I really enjoyed Light Perpetual (a novel that rewrote history, allowing five children killed in the 1944 London Woolworths bombing to survive and live through the 20th century), and I was looking forward to anotherContinue reading “NONESUCH – Francis Spufford”
TRANSCRIPTION – Ben Lerner
“You call this fiction, but it is more.” “I felt eight and eighteen and forty-five all at once, my grasp on reality was tentative, an extreme form of the effect his presence always had on me, a nightmarish form of what others so loved about him – how he seemed from the future and theContinue reading “TRANSCRIPTION – Ben Lerner”
A Girl Named Tommi 