Clifford Garstang
A compelling read. Set primarily in 1935, the book features a strong young woman, Mariella, who comes to work for the Hemingway family in Key West. She's dealing with her own family's demons, so Papa's family only complicates things further. The book does tend toward melodrama, but it's immensely enjoyable nonetheless.
While this is an interesting read, Armstrong misrepresents modern atheism, and that detracts from the book's overall impact.
Although I'm not usually a fan of child-centric fiction, I enjoyed these stories (chapters?) about young Tot and her family living under difficult conditions in England. Tot's challenges–she has “fits” (epilepsy); she's younger (and brighter) than everyone else in the neighborhood; her father's ambitions of jazz stardom have taken him off to New Orleans. The book is filled with very believable characters and situations.
While the chapters read like stand-alone stories, the overall effect is of a novel. Recommended!
This is a well-crafted book about a quest, and it is filled with charming characters and misfits. In the end, though, I found it overly sentimental and melodramatic. If you like that sort of thing–lots of people do–maybe this is for you.
The story is about Harold Fry, a retiree who learns that an old colleague is dying of cancer. He writes her a letter, but decides that isn't enough. He's going to go visit her. On foot. It's the least he can do because of something that happened 20 years earlier. We don't find out what that something is until the last few pages of the book, however, which contributes to the melodrama. This and other bits of information are withheld from the reader solely to keep us turning the pages. It's one thing when the narrative consciousness discovers information along with the reader. It's another thing, and for me a turn-off, when the information simply isn't being revealed.
So, be warned. There are things Harold isn't telling you.
I read an advance reading copy of this book and provided this blurb:
“In an elaborate mosaic that is both moving and uplifting, Out of Peel Tree tells the story of three generations of West Virginia women and their survival against the odds. This vivid, compact work is akin to an unforgiving family portrait that reveals everything—warts and all.”
Clifford Garstang, author of What the Zhang Boys Know and 2013 recipient of the Library of Virginia Literary Award for Fiction.
The Names by Don DeLillo is a fascinating but somewhat fuzzy book. Set primarily in Greece, it tells the story of James Axton, an American who develops risk analyses, those odd-sounding reports used by international investors and insurers. When the book was published in 1982, would readers have suspected that Axton worked for the CIA? It was the first thing I thought of.
But Axton's work is only a part of this intricate story about language, alphabets, secrecy, and cultural identity.
See the rest of my review here
Good poetry is usually edifying, but it isn't always fun. I get the sense that this poet had a blast writing these poems, which take full advantage of word play, aggressive rhymes, and playful rhythms. In fact, I've never read another book quite like it.
This isn't a book so much as a collection of Dr. Tyson's writings that somehow relate to NASA and space exploration. A reader could dip in and out of the book and not miss any part of a continuous thread because there is no such thread. In that regard the book was something of a disappointment, even though I'm a fan of Dr. Tyson.
[See my full review here: Review of Space Chronicles
Don't let the length fool you. Often in concision there is density of meaning, and that's the case in this thin volume. I'll have more to say about it soon, but for now–recommended.
Fascinating. The book doesn't claim to PROVE reincarnation, but it does offer evidence that it says is hard to refute. Although I love the idea of reincarnation, it does conflict with my other, non-religious beliefs. Still, a very interesting book with great case studies. The writing isn't particularly vivid, but that makes it seem all the more credible.
Full review at Perpetual Folly: Review of Life Before Life
I highly recommend this book about the Benghazi attacks, especially if you are someone who has given the slightest credence to the right-wing claims of some sort of Obama/Clinton cover-up. (And right now it is FREE on Kindle.) The book demonstrates clearly that the Benghazi “scandal” is a hoax perpetrated by the GOP–first to damage Obama in the run up to the 2012 election and then to damage Hillary Clinton, perceived by them (rightly so) to be the biggest obstacle to their reclaiming the White House in 2016.
Benghazi was a tragedy. It wasn't a cover-up. It wasn't a scandal.
I was asked to blurb this book, and this is what I said:
What Came Before is a remarkable achievement – a smart, fast-paced mystery that asks important questions about identity, family, and race. And, like the best of its genre, it's loaded with puzzles: What really happened on the day Abbie Palmer's mother killed herself? Who is the mysterious woman who shows up on Abbie's doorstep, and why would anyone want her dead? What will it take to reconcile Abbie with her husband? Gay Degani's prose is at all times lucid and compelling, and her exciting story will keep you glued to your chair.
I am the editor of Prime Number Magazine and I happen to think Volume 4 of our Editors' Selections series is the best yet. Besides some great fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, the book includes prize winners from our inaugural Prime Number Magazine Awards AND an interview with Sergio Troncoso, philosopher and fiction writer.
Robert Reich gets it exactly right, including a prescription for what we can all do to start fixing the problem.
I've included this book on both my poetry and drama shelves because of the way Conaway has structured this collection. It's made of fine poems, to be sure, but it's also a dialogue between Conaway the instructor and the imagined voices of four students, all female inmates in a juvenile detention center. I'd love to see this fine drama/poetry staged one day.
The individual poems are moving and dark, as the lives and attitudes, but fondness for language, of the characters is revealed.
Although there was more memoir here than I really wanted to read, it did help to put the drug research and policy elements in perspective. The conclusions of the book are surprising to me, and they have the potential to bring great changes to American criminal laws if they do contribute to a serious discussion of decriminalization.
The first third of the book I found tedious. The whole “mean-streets” thing got old, especially because the fighting seemed constant, so it took a very long time to get through the early ears. But then when Dubus III began to rediscover his father, the book became interesting for me, and ultimately an enjoyable read.
I'm not a judge of great poetry, but I did like the poems in this collection. More importantly, though, they effectively raise awareness of a deadly disease that is all but forgotten in the US. I especially liked pairing the poems with headlines–some informative, some misleading–drawn from other publications. Having spent a fair amount of time in malaria areas, I understand the danger of this disease. The author is to be commended for helping the work toward eradication.
The poems in this collection are darkly personal. Described as “poetic memoir,” the book tells the story of the poet's self discovery, from her difficult childhood to finding healing through poetry. It's not a barrel of laughs, by any stretch, but all the more rewarding for that.
You may know Benjamin Busch as an actor on The Wire and other television programs and movies. I've never seen The Wire—no TV, no cable, no satellite—so I haven't seen his acting work. I know him because we're Facebook friends, although I'm not sure how that came about. And I've known of him for a long time, since I read his father's essay in Harper's about Ben's military service. You see, I was a fan of the fiction of Frederick Busch, Ben's father. The elder Busch, who died suddenly in 2006, was a terrific novelist and story writer. (I have a shockingly large collection of his books, more than one signed by him; I even had the pleasure of hearing him read once in DC at Chapters and I remember him talking about his dogs, which made me like him even more . . .)
Read my full review here: Review of Dust to Dust
The Car Thief, republished as an eBook in 2012 by Astor & Blue and now available in paperback also, was Theodore Weesner's first novel, originally published by Random House in 1972. Weesner, a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, went on to publish several more novels and a collection of short stories and is said to be, though nearing 80, working on a memoir and a new novel.
Read my full review: Review of The Car Thief
Over the years I have read an occasional Donald Hall poem, but I can't say I'm familiar with his work. But he appeared on a recent cover of Poets & Writers, so I thought it was time I corrected that. While looking for his work in the poetry section of a used bookstore, I came across this book, one of his memoirs. That seemed like a good place to start, so I bought it.
See my full review here: Review of Unpacking the Boxes by Donald Hall