“If old age was thought of as an evening, ending in midnight oblivion, they were well within the eleventh hour.” That quote from the first story in Salman Rushdie’s new collection, The Eleventh Hour: A Quintet of Stories (Random House 2025), pretty much sums up the work as a whole; in these five stories, fallingContinue reading “THE ELEVENTH HOUR – Salman Rushdie”
Tag Archives: Random House
VERA, OR FAITH
It’s been a hot minute since I’ve read Gary Shteyngart, but thoughts of Absurdistan still make me chuckle nearly two decades later. While that filthy funny novel followed the adventures of Misha Vainberg, the 325-pound son of the 1,238th richest man in Russia, Vera, or Faith (Random House 2025) gives us ten-year-old Vera – aContinue reading “VERA, OR FAITH”
OUR EVENINGS – Alan Hollinghurst
“I lay there for agonized hours as the miracle of being in bed at him was nibbled away by the heat and the hangover and the longing.” This year, I decided to get “a jump” on potential Booker books, and Alan Hollinghurst’s (a previous Booker winner) new novel, Our Evenings (Random House 2024) was aContinue reading “OUR EVENINGS – Alan Hollinghurst”
GHOSTS OF HARVARD – Francesca Serritella
“They were ghosts, after all, and happy endings don’t haunt anyone.” Francesca Serritella’s Ghosts of Harvard (Random House 2020) is a rather ambitious work that suffers from trying to do too much. There’s a lot of good things, but the ghost story, mental health awareness, and political thriller don’t always mesh that nicely in theContinue reading “GHOSTS OF HARVARD – Francesca Serritella”
MEMPHIS – Tara M. Stringfellow
“The things women do for the sake of their daughters. The things women don’t. The shame of it all.” I’m still toying with the idea of reading the Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist, and I put in several holds at the library. Since I’ve already read a couple and intended to read a few moreContinue reading “MEMPHIS – Tara M. Stringfellow”
SPARE – Prince Harry
When I was a sophomore in high school, I watched two young boys walk behind their mother’s coffin. Theirs was a posh world of opulence, royalty and history. These were young princes, the heir and the spare, to the Crown that had dominated the world, but in that moment, they were two brothers struggling withContinue reading “SPARE – Prince Harry”
OH WILLIAM! – Elizabeth Strout
My fourth read of the 2022 Booker Prize longlist was Elizabeth Strout’s Oh William! (Random House 2021). Despite being the third in a trilogy, Oh William is crafted such that it can be read as a standalone. Written as a fictional memoir, the novel scratches at some things I typically dislike in fiction. Not surprisingly,Continue reading “OH WILLIAM! – Elizabeth Strout”
TRUE BIZ – Sara Nović
I’ve read a lot of books in the past almost four decades, and I can say with absolute certainty that none of them were like Sara Nović’s True Biz (Random House 2022); deaf representation has been woeful absent in my literary canon. This book is… I’m not sure I can find the words. Part teenageContinue reading “TRUE BIZ – Sara Nović”
NO HEAVEN FOR GOOD BOYS – Keisha Bush
Keisha Bush’s No Heaven for Good Boys (Random House 2020) is one of the more delicate and devastating debut novels I’ve read in a long while. The tragedy of it is exquisitely crafted, clinging to the reader like small, dirty hands begging for money, or a hungry child suckling at his mother’s breast. It’s aContinue reading “NO HEAVEN FOR GOOD BOYS – Keisha Bush”
SKIN OF THE SEA – Natasha Bowen
“Here is a story. Story it is…” Billing Natasha Bowen’s Skin of the Sea (Random House 2021) as Children of Blood and Bone meets The Little Mermaid does it a bit of disservice; just because a book centers around Yoruba spirits (Orisa/Orisha) doesn’t mean it has to be compared to every other book that alsoContinue reading “SKIN OF THE SEA – Natasha Bowen”
A Girl Named Tommi 