!1: Now is the time If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This: Stories Order Today!
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Over All Rating Reviews : Great Deal : $13.00
Date Created : Nov 10, 2010 16:17:26
Heralding the arrival of a stunning new voice in American fiction, Robin Black’s If I Loved You, I Would Tell You Thistakes readers into the minds and hearts of people navigating the unsettling transitions that life presents to us all.
Written with maturity and insight, and in beautiful, clear-eyed prose, these stories plumb the depths of love, loss, and hope. A father struggles to forge an independent identity as his blind daughter prepares for college. A mother comes to terms with her adult daughter’s infidelity, even as she keeps a disturbing secret of her own. An artist mourns the end of a romance while painting a dying man’s portrait. An accident on a trip to Italy and an unexpected connection with a stranger cause a woman to question her lifelong assumptions about herself.
Brilliant, hopeful, and fearlessly honest, If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This illuminates the truths of human relationships, truths we come to recognize in these characters and in ourselves.
!1: Now is the time My Name Is Mary Sutter: A Novel Order Today!
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Over All Rating Reviews : Great Deal : $7.99
Date Created : Oct 29, 2010 02:21:06
An enthralling historical novel about a young woman's struggle to become a doctor during the Civil War
In this stunning first novel, Mary Sutter is a brilliant, headstrong midwife from Albany, New York, who dreams of becoming a surgeon. Determined to overcome the prejudices against women in medicine-and eager to run away from her recent heartbreak- Mary leaves home and travels to Washington, D.C. to help tend the legions of Civil War wounded. Under the guidance of William Stipp and James Blevens-two surgeons who fall unwittingly in love with Mary's courage, will, and stubbornness in the face of suffering-and resisting her mother's pleas to return home to help with the birth of her twin sister's baby, Mary pursues her medical career in the desperately overwhelmed hospitals of the capital.
Like Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain and Robert Hicks's The Widow of the South, My Name Is Mary Sutter powerfully evokes the atmosphere of the period. Rich with historical detail (including marvelous depictions of Lincoln, Dorothea Dix, General McClellan, and John Hay among others), and full of the tragedies and challenges of wartime, My Name Is Mary Sutter is an exceptional novel. And in Mary herself, Robin Oliveira has created a truly unforgettable heroine whose unwavering determination and vulnerability will resonate with readers everywhere.
!1: Best Buy
Young, unmarried, single-minded and determined, Mary Sutter has become one of the best midwives im upstate New York. Taught at her mother's side, she shows an instinct and quickness that would serve her well if she could attend medical school. Her dream to become a physician, a surgeon, even, has been rebuffed at every turn until the beginning of the conflict between the states. Reading the call for nurses in the newspaper, she leaves home and presents herself to chief surgeon William Stipp at the Union Hotel (now a hospital)who tells her to go home. Through perseverance and the refusal to leave, Mary eventually becomes his assistant and is daily faced with the filth, infection, lack of supplies, nonstop surgery and patient care and warfare that quickly overwhelms the old hotel and its occupants.
Robin Oliveria has crafted a stunning novel that I found so engrossing, I read it in one evening's setting. Mary Sutter's journey takes her from a comfortable home and one of the few careers a woman was allowed to Washington, D.C. during the height of the Civil war. In her daily workings she comes in contact with personages integral to the Civil War, Lincoln's personal secretary, Dorthea Dix who persuaded Lincoln to use female nurses and even president Lincoln. These personalities appear as part of the every day hubbub that was Washington, D.C. Mary even follows the surgeon onto the battlefield, bringing much needed supplies and an extra pair of hands. Oliveria did extensive research in books written after the war and medical care available during the conflict. She also weaves in the personal side of Mary's life, the mother and sister left behind in New York, the loss of a hoped for romance, the men who were captured by her intelligence and drive. This was a book I could not put aside, I had to make the journey with Mary Sutter, and I was not disappointed on Sale!
!1: Now is the time The Summer We Read Gatsby: A Novel Order Today!
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Over All Rating Reviews : Great Deal : $3.75
Date Created : Oct 16, 2010 12:30:24
A delightful comedy of manners about two sisters who must set aside their differences when they inherit a house in the Hamptons
Half-sisters Cassie and Peck could not be more different. Cassie is a newly divorced journalist with her feet firmly planted on the ground; Peck is a vintage-obsessed actress with her head in the clouds. In fact, the only thing they seem to have in common is their inheritance of Fool's House, a rundown cottage left to them by their beloved Aunt Lydia. But Cassie and Peck can't afford the house, and they can't agree on anything, much less what to do with the place. Plus, along with the house, they've inherited an artist-inresidence and self-proclaimed genius named Biggsy who seems to bring suspiciously bad luck wherever he goes. As these two likable sisters try to understand their aunt's puzzling instructions to "seek a thing of utmost value" from within the house, they're both distracted by romantic entanglements with men from their pasts. The Summer We Read Gatsby, set in the end-of-an-era summer of 2008, is filled with fabulous parties, eccentric characters, and insider society details that showcase Ganek's pitch-perfect sense of style and wit.
!1: Best Buy Half-sisters Cassie and Pecksland Moriarty reunite at Fools House, a run-down cottage in the Hamptons, bequeathed to them by their Aunt Lydia. Peck, an aspiring actress from NYC, and Cassie, a magazine writer living in Switzerland, can't come to terms with giving up their aunt's artistic legacy, which includes a "fool" or artist-in-residence. The two polar opposites struggle with honoring Lydia's request to sell the property and keeping the familiarity and safety of the one place where they shared a common bond, including the summer they read Gatsby.
Through Cassie's eyes, readers meander through the back roads of the Hamptons, discovering how the rich and famous play during the summer. Between choosing the right outfit to stand out as a fashionina (a term coined by Peck) and attending elegant parties, the two girls search for what could be an unsigned Jackson Pollack painting that vanished from above the mantel and a possible first edition of Gatsby that's disappeared from the house. But the story isn't about finding missing swag. It's about finding something of innate value, and the discoveries they make that summer are priceless.
Author Danielle Ganek introduces a steady stream of vibrant characters, creating an extended family for the half-sisters. A charming read, but I kept hoping for a stronger connection to F. Scott Fitzgerald's story.
!1: Now is the time St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves (Vintage Contemporaries) Order Today!
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Over All Rating Reviews : Great Deal : $8.42
Date Created : Oct 03, 2010 21:34:06
A San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year
In these ten glittering stories, debut author Karen Russell takes us to the ghostly and magical swamps of the Florida Everglades. Here wolf-like girls are reformed by nuns, a family makes their living wrestling alligators in a theme park, and little girls sail away on crab shells. Filled with stunning inventiveness and heart, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolvesintroduces a radiant new writer.
!1: Best Buy I was recommended this book by a professor in my MFA program because of my appreciation of George Saunders and some of the work I turned in bordered on the post-modernist style. While Karen Russell's collection is a bit more tame in comparison with authors like Saunders, it is equally absurdist and extremely enjoyable to read. I found myself breezing through this collection and finishing it only two days. Simply a fantastic collection of stories: easy to read, entertaining, funny, creative, and well written.
I learned a lot about my own writing from St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, and I firmly believe that Russell has a fresh perspective on story organization as well as well as character development. It isn't often a reader is given the perspective of a pre-teen alligator wrestler who is possessed by the spirit of her real/imagined boyfriend as in the first story in this collection.
I highly recommend St. Lucy's for anyone who is looking for a great book that can be read for either enjoyment or for deeper critical analysis. on Sale!
Over All Rating Reviews : Great Deal : $9.89
Date Created : Sep 21, 2010 07:00:12
Something Borrowed meets Must Love Dogs in this big- hearted debut about friendship, love, and a German Shepherd named Joe.
Savannah "Van" Leone has been in love with Peter Clarke ever since she literally fell head over heels in front of him on the first day of college. Now, six years later, instead of standing across from him at the altar, Van's standing behind her best friend Janie as maid of honor, trying to mask her heartache and guilt as Janie marries the only man Van's ever loved. Before, Van's mother died, she told Van never to let Peter go, but as the couple exchanges vows, Van wonders if her fairy tale ending will ever come true.
After the wedding, Van drowns her sorrows in Kool-Aid-vodka cocktails and reruns of Rin Tin Tin, and does what any heartbroken woman in her situation would do: She impulsively buys a German Shepherd over the Internet. The pocket-size puppy Van is expecting turns out to be a clumsy, hundred-pound beast who only responds to commands in Slovak, and Van is at the end of her rope... until she realizes that this quirky giant may be the only living being who will always be loyal to her, no matter what.
Van affectionately names her dog Joe, and together, they work to mend the pieces of Van's shattered heart. And it certainly doesn't hurt that Joe's vet is a rugged sweetheart with floppy blond hair and a winning smile. But when the newlyweds return from their honeymoon, Van is forced to decide just how much she's willing to sacrifice in order to have everything she ever wanted, proving that sometimes life needs to get more complicated before it can get better.
Warm and witty, poignant and funny, Stay is an unforgettable debut that illuminates the boundlessness of love and marks the arrival of an irresistible new voice.
!1: Best Buy Allie Larkin is a talented young author, there is no doubt about that. She captured me instantly with her witty humor and characters that pull you into the story, making you one of them. Allie Larkin is a new author who will rise to the top if she continues with captivating novels such as this one!
Stay is a story that will do one of three things: make you laugh, make you cry, or both. I did both. I laughed at all the humorous thoughts and antics that Allie added to Van's life. I cried when I saw what Van was going through-being in love with a man who married her best friend. I see myself in Van when she feels she's not good enough for anyone. I just wanted to reach out and hug her! That's how I feel lots of the time. The laughing came at all of Van's thoughts through out the story, especially when she was upset at someone. Boy could she think up some thoughts! Allie added the flavor of the story with the laugh out loud humor. The climax of the story came when Van decided, on a drunken internet search, to purchase a German Shepard "puppy" off the internet to be her companion. She felt it was the only one that would be loyal and faithful to her no matter what. So, when Joe arrived, she thought there was a mistake, as this wasn't the size of a puppy, but he certainly filled her void! The story got even better when Joe, the adorable "puppy" bound into the scenes, and helped Van meet Alex, the veterinarian. Alex was such a dear man and one that anyone woman would love! He really added the spice to this novel.
I recommend this fabulous story with 4 stars...I must warn you about the language though, as there is use of some language....this novel wouldn't be good for everyone if you don't like stories that have language. But, if you are a canine lover like me, you fall in love with this story about Van and her cuddly&cute, adorable&fluffy 4 legged companion! Allie Larkin's Stay is the perfect read for animal lovers and those looking for a good laugh. I'll definitely be looking for more novels by Allie, especially if they all have that laugh out loud humor to unwind at the end of the day!
*This book was provided for review by PUYB Promotions* on Sale!
Over All Rating Reviews : Great Deal : $12.99
Date Created : Aug 26, 2010 20:51:36
“It happened fast. Thirty-two minutes for one world to die, another to be born.”
First, the unthinkable: a security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment. Then, the unspeakable: a night of chaos and carnage gives way to sunrise on a nation, and ultimately a world, forever altered. All that remains for the stunned survivors is the long fight ahead and a future ruled by fear—of darkness, of death, of a fate far worse.
As civilization swiftly crumbles into a primal landscape of predators and prey, two people flee in search of sanctuary. FBI agent Brad Wolgast is a good man haunted by what he’s done in the line of duty. Six-year-old orphan Amy Harper Bellafonte is a refugee from the doomed scientific project that has triggered apocalypse. He is determined to protect her from the horror set loose by her captors. But for Amy, escaping the bloody fallout is only the beginning of a much longer odyssey—spanning miles and decades—towards the time and place where she must finish what should never have begun.
With The Passage, award-winning author Justin Cronin has written both a relentlessly suspenseful adventure and an epic chronicle of human endurance in the face of unprecedented catastrophe and unimaginable danger. Its inventive storytelling, masterful prose, and depth of human insight mark it as a crucial and transcendent work of modern fiction.
±1±: Best Buy This may be a true vacation reading endeavor. I took this on over the course of a week while visiting Lake Tahoe this summer. I am thankful for the Kindle (not a shameless plug)after seeing the book sitting on the shelf of the bookstore. This is a book that could put you over weight maximum in checked baggage if you decide to pack it.
It is easy to be completely engrossed for the first 2/3 rd's of the novel. Characters are well developed and I felt the connection with them which is a credit to the author. It is more than just another apocalyptic story clone. Science, vampires, government gone bad, survivalist's, commentary on the good (and bad) of the human condition, immortality and the desire that man has to overcome all play out in a sometimes too casual fashion. I wanted the continual tension that this story had an abundance of. When it went missing, it felt a little empty. This was survival of mankind...the ultimate "all in"...the pace could have stayed frenzied and frantic as far as I was concerned and the novel seemed to be at it's best when portraying this world and its characters agonies and struggles...that seems to be the way Cronin wanted the world to be. The waves rise, fall and crest in this story, it's just that the set's are never quite as consistent as you would want them to be (a California metaphor if you will pardon me). It even created an active dialog with my teenage daughter who was debating the relative merits of the Twilight series versus this version of a very dark future, vampires and the not quite so vapid and two dimensional of characters that you can encounter in this genre of literature. I doubt that Cronin was aiming for the casual teen market with this one.
The last 1/3 rd of the novel to me seemed to be a little too much of the set up for the next in the series that we know will be coming. The tale still held form and kept true to itself..it just seemed to wander occasionally to get us on to the next way point. I know that this is a popular and profitable literary construct in this day and age, but, as a reader I want a ultimately satisfying read that stands on its own merits, that makes me want the next book to enhance and extend the story that I enjoyed. I don't want it to just be a continuation to pick up where the last story left off.
Don't get me wrong...I enjoyed this story and the strengths far outweigh the weaknesses. And some of those strengths are in the details and in the engaging characterizations that make this a lengthy novel to take on. A recommendation to read would be easy to elicit from me. Just be willing to understand and push through the inevitable low spots and be accepting of where this story is going to be heading.
Kudos to Cronin for a refreshing and creative take on this genre. on Sale!
Over All Rating Reviews : Great Deal : $11.99
Date Created : Aug 26, 2010 05:00:09
“It happened fast. Thirty-two minutes for one world to die, another to be born.”
First, the unthinkable: a security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment. Then, the unspeakable: a night of chaos and carnage gives way to sunrise on a nation, and ultimately a world, forever altered. All that remains for the stunned survivors is the long fight ahead and a future ruled by fear—of darkness, of death, of a fate far worse.
As civilization swiftly crumbles into a primal landscape of predators and prey, two people flee in search of sanctuary. FBI agent Brad Wolgast is a good man haunted by what he’s done in the line of duty. Six-year-old orphan Amy Harper Bellafonte is a refugee from the doomed scientific project that has triggered apocalypse. He is determined to protect her from the horror set loose by her captors. But for Amy, escaping the bloody fallout is only the beginning of a much longer odyssey—spanning miles and decades—towards the time and place where she must finish what should never have begun.
With The Passage, award-winning author Justin Cronin has written both a relentlessly suspenseful adventure and an epic chronicle of human endurance in the face of unprecedented catastrophe and unimaginable danger. Its inventive storytelling, masterful prose, and depth of human insight mark it as a crucial and transcendent work of modern fiction.
±1±: Best Buy This may be a true vacation reading endeavor. I took this on over the course of a week while visiting Lake Tahoe this summer. I am thankful for the Kindle (not a shameless plug)after seeing the book sitting on the shelf of the bookstore. This is a book that could put you over weight maximum in checked baggage if you decide to pack it.
It is easy to be completely engrossed for the first 2/3 rd's of the novel. Characters are well developed and I felt the connection with them which is a credit to the author. It is more than just another apocalyptic story clone. Science, vampires, government gone bad, survivalist's, commentary on the good (and bad) of the human condition, immortality and the desire that man has to overcome all play out in a sometimes too casual fashion. I wanted the continual tension that this story had an abundance of. When it went missing, it felt a little empty. This was survival of mankind...the ultimate "all in"...the pace could have stayed frenzied and frantic as far as I was concerned and the novel seemed to be at it's best when portraying this world and its characters agonies and struggles...that seems to be the way Cronin wanted the world to be. The waves rise, fall and crest in this story, it's just that the set's are never quite as consistent as you would want them to be (a California metaphor if you will pardon me). It even created an active dialog with my teenage daughter who was debating the relative merits of the Twilight series versus this version of a very dark future, vampires and the not quite so vapid and two dimensional of characters that you can encounter in this genre of literature. I doubt that Cronin was aiming for the casual teen market with this one.
The last 1/3 rd of the novel to me seemed to be a little too much of the set up for the next in the series that we know will be coming. The tale still held form and kept true to itself..it just seemed to wander occasionally to get us on to the next way point. I know that this is a popular and profitable literary construct in this day and age, but, as a reader I want a ultimately satisfying read that stands on its own merits, that makes me want the next book to enhance and extend the story that I enjoyed. I don't want it to just be a continuation to pick up where the last story left off.
Don't get me wrong...I enjoyed this story and the strengths far outweigh the weaknesses. And some of those strengths are in the details and in the engaging characterizations that make this a lengthy novel to take on. A recommendation to read would be easy to elicit from me. Just be willing to understand and push through the inevitable low spots and be accepting of where this story is going to be heading.
Kudos to Cronin for a refreshing and creative take on this genre. on Sale!
±1±: Now is the time Girl in Translation Order Today!
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Over All Rating Reviews : Great Deal : $15.04
Date Created : Aug 13, 2010 13:45:09
Introducing a fresh, exciting Chinese-American voice, an inspiring debut about an immigrant girl forced to choose between two worlds and two futures.
When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she quickly begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker in the evenings. Disguising the more difficult truths of her life-like the staggering degree of her poverty, the weight of her family's future resting on her shoulders, or her secret love for a factory boy who shares none of her talent or ambition-Kimberly learns to constantly translate not just her language but herself back and forth between the worlds she straddles.
Through Kimberly's story, author Jean Kwok, who also emigrated from Hong Kong as a young girl, brings to the page the lives of countless immigrants who are caught between the pressure to succeed in America, their duty to their family, and their own personal desires, exposing a world that we rarely hear about. Written in an indelible voice that dramatizes the tensions of an immigrant girl growing up between two cultures, surrounded by a language and world only half understood, Girl in Translation is an unforgettable and classic novel of an American immigrant-a moving tale of hardship and triumph, heartbreak and love, and all that gets lost in translation.
±1±: Best Buy Tales of an immigrant coming to America and struggling to succeed are abundant, but Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok tells the story of Kim and her Ma as they immigrate to New York City, in the hopes of the American Dream. Kwok tells Kim's story in chapters, made of short cinematic prose that mimic snapshots of a life, and make it easy to get engrossed in the story of Kim and her Ma. Brought over by her Aunt Paula, Kim and her Ma move into a roach-infested apartment, with broken windows, and no heat. Put to work in a factory that pays "per piece," Kim realizes that in order move out the soon-to-be-condemned building she must do well in school. The novel is told through Kim's perspective, and focuses mostly on her experience at school, with teachers who don't understand her Chinese heritage or that she comprehends very little English. As Kim's English improves she advances in school, scoring very high on her standardized tests, much to Aunt Paula's dismay and envy. In addition to Kim's studies, she must help her mother at the factory where she meets her friend Matt. As the two grow up together in the common setting of the factory, they become really close, with their friendship becoming one of the main centerpieces of the novel.
As I was reading this book I was reminded of the films El Norte and Spanglish, both of which detail immigrants experience, the later in particular with a mother/daughter relationship. However while this book has tones similar to these movies, the novel has a completely different tone. The novel starts when Kim is in sixth grade and progresses until she's thirty and with it comes all the subtleties of growing up. Kwok handles this subject matter with maturity and grace as Kim tries to stay true to what her Ma taught her while assimilating into American society and making friends. It is in this method of storytelling that Kim's voice comes through, to the point where I thought I was reading a memoir and not a novel, and found myself having to keep reminding myself that the volume in my hands was a work of fiction. Kim's voice is so present and alive that it felt like she was in the room as I read the book and found myself relating to her, not as immigrant, but as an intelligent student.
Kwok's personable characters and realistic plot make this story come to life and jump off the page with familiar situations and archetypes. Everyone has had that childhood love interest or a friend who was there when no one else was, and its more likely then not that everyone has one relative that they don't get along with. Even though all readers of this text might not be first-generation immigrants, Kwok elegantly explains the life and colloquialisms of a Chinese immigrant.
However rich the characters may be, the one thing that always makes a novel for me, is when I can't predict the ending. As I was reading this book I found myself anticipating a fairytale ending, but Kwok turned it on its head in the last twenty pages and made me happy and sad at the same time. As such, I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants a delicious and dramatic human story. Readers will be pleasantly surprised to find themselves or someone they know in Kim's personality.
±1±: Now is the time The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake: A Novel Order Today!
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Over All Rating Reviews : Great Deal : $15.17
Date Created : Jul 19, 2010 03:21:10
The wondrous Aimee Bender conjures the lush and moving story of a girl whose magical gift is really a devastating curse.
On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein, a girl at the periphery of schoolyard games and her distracted parents’ attention, bites into her mother’s homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother’s emotions in the cake. She discovers this gift to her horror, for her mother—her cheerful, good-with-crafts, can-do mother—tastes of despair and desperation. Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes a peril and a threat to Rose.
The curse her gift has bestowed is the secret knowledge all families keep hidden—her mother’s life outside the home, her father’s detachment, her brother’s clash with the world. Yet as Rose grows up she learns to harness her gift and becomes aware that there are secrets even her taste buds cannot discern.
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is a luminous tale about the enormous difficulty of loving someone fully when you know too much about them. It is heartbreaking and funny, wise and sad, and confirms Aimee Bender’s place as “a writer who makes you grateful for the very existence of language” (San Francisco Chronicle).
±1±: Best Buy Aimee Bender's prose is the right recipe to transport you. Rose is needy, neglected and has a special skill, she can taste people's emotions in the food they cook. She first discovers this in her mother's lemon cake and soon eats only processed foods. The extended metaphor allows Bender to reveal the intricacies of family life and Rose's struggles in adolescence and young adulthood, finally applying this talent and learning to cook for herself and others. For me, Bender's magical realism is less successful in her brother's special talent, but it serves as a crucial plot point. A recommended read. on Sale!
±1±: Now is the time Kings of the Earth: A Novel Order Today!
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Over All Rating Reviews : Great Deal : $13.00
Date Created : Jul 06, 2010 02:57:08
Following up Finn, his much-heralded and prize-winning debut whose voice evoked “the mythic styles of his literary predecessors . . . William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy and Edward P. Jones” (San Francisco Chronicle), Jon Clinch returns with Kings of the Earth,a powerful and haunting story of life, death, and family in rural America.
The edge of civilization is closer than we think.
It’s as close as a primitive farm on the margins of an upstate New York town, where the three Proctor brothers live together in a kind of crumbling stasis. They linger like creatures from an older, wilder, and far less forgiving world—until one of them dies in his sleep and the other two are suspected of murder.
Told in a chorus of voices that span a generation, Kings of the Earth examines the bonds of family and blood, faith and suspicion, that link not just the brothers but their entire community.
Vernon, the oldest of the Proctors, is reduced by work and illness to a shambling shadow of himself. Feebleminded Audie lingers by his side, needy and unknowable. And Creed, the youngest of the three and the only one to have seen anything of the world (courtesy of the U.S. Army), struggles with impulses and accusations beyond his understanding. We also meet Del Graham, a state trooper torn between his urge to understand the brothers and his desire for justice; Preston Hatch, a kindhearted and resourceful neighbor who’s spent his life protecting the three men from themselves; the brothers’ only sister, Donna, who managed to cut herself loose from the family but is then drawn back; and a host of other living, breathing characters whose voices emerge to shape this deeply intimate saga of the human condition at its limits.
±1±: Best Buy With this second novel, Clinch has established himself as a gifted storyteller of rural American life. Like Faulkner and McCarthy, he exposes the underbelly of the dispossessed with a nihilistic, gothic, and poetic style. Like Steinbeck, he portrays the marginal class pedigrees with compassion and wry social observance.
Finn, the author's first novel, was a fictional biography of Huck Finn's father--a savage, twisted man who bears no similarities to Twain's Pap. I was hooked from the merciless opening sentence to its ruthless last pages.
Clinch's new novel shares some of the same themes, characters, and features, such as a disenfranchised cast of people, a whiskey still, a house with a broken spine, a blind man, and a riverine terrain. This story is inspired by the true history of the Ward brothers of Munnsville, New York and the subsequent documentary, "My Brother's Keeper." Researching it on Wikipedia after I read the novel was a helpful complement to the story.
Three elderly brothers--Vernon, Audie, and Creed Proctor--live together on a dilapidated (that's an understatement) farm in upstate New York. One morning, on arising, Vernon is found dead in the bed he shares with his brothers. The investigation of his death in 1990 is the central subject matter of the story, which spans from 1932-1990.
Told in a chorus of voices in short chapters (sometimes one sentence, sometimes a few pages), the narrative alternates from one character to another, like a non-linear chronicle. The title of each chapter or heading is a character's name. These include the three brothers; their parents, Lester and Ruth; their sister, Donna; her husband DeAlton, and son, Tom; their neighbors Margaret and Preston; and law enforcement officer, Del Graham, as well as a smattering of others. Unlike the strictly third person POV used in Finn, the voices fluctuate between first and third person here. The reader is given back story and secondary plot through the eyes of the various voices, and the tension builds gradually as the links connect between past and present, between neighbor and kin, and between outsiders and inhabitants.
Clinch evokes an earthy, bleak sense of place in the farm settlement of Carversville, with its convoluted web of sinister and complex family dynamics. The grime-encrusted film that covers every skin and surface is so convincing that I could fairly smell the reek of filth saturating the story. He also provides some graphic scenes of the Proctors' agrarian life, including a mishap of ice fishing and the slaughter of a pig, scenes that made me dizzy from its ferocity and immediacy. He strikes a taut equipoise between brutal and beautiful, lashing and lyrical.
There are conspicuous blemishes with the alternating viewpoints--the voices are not entirely consistent to character. The three brothers are illiterate, atavistic, and largely inchoate to others, especially Audie. When referred to by other characters, the reader perceives correctly their boorish and uncouth traits. However, when they spoke, they articulated with too much range, reflection, and harmony, which contradicted what we already knew about their natures and did not successfully differentiate them from other narrators.
In a pointillist construction, it is detracting when several narrators lack distinction. It created a static energy, particularly in the first half of the novel, when the reader is getting acquainted with the cast. The ensemble ran together despite the chapter identification. But when Clinch uses third person narration, it is impeccable. He isn't trying to be colloquial. That is when his prose soars and I felt the immediacy of events and surroundings.
Despite these structural flaws, I recommend this novel for its powerful atmospherics and compelling story. I look forward to Clinch's third novel.
±1±: Now is the time Anthropology of an American Girl: A Novel Order Today!
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Over All Rating Reviews : Great Deal : $13.30
Date Created : Jun 22, 2010 23:34:05
Self-published in 2003, Hilary Thayer Hamann’s Anthropology of an American Girl touched a nerve among readers, who identified with the sexual and intellectual awakening of its heroine, a young woman on the brink of adulthood. A moving depiction of the transformative power of first love, Hamann’s first novel follows Eveline Auerbach from her high school years in East Hampton, New York, in the 1970s through her early adulthood in the moneyed, high-pressured Manhattan of the 1980s.
Centering on Evie’s fragile relationship with her family and her thwarted love affair with Harrison Rourke, a professional boxer, the novel is both a love story and an exploration of the difficulty of finding one’s place in the world. As Evie surrenders to the dazzling emotional highs of love and the crippling loneliness of heartbreak, she strives to reconcile her identity with the constraints that all relationships—whether those familial or romantic, uplifting to the spirit or quietly detrimental—inherently place on us. Though she stumbles and strains against social conventions, Evie remains a strong yet sensitive observer of the world around her, often finding beauty and meaning in unexpected places.
Newly edited and revised since its original publication, Anthropology of an American Girl is an extraordinary piece of writing, original in its vision and thrilling in its execution.
±1±: Best Buy I am a voracious reader, and usually I consume books rapidly. The best way I can describe this book is that it consumed me instead of the other way around.
You will be drawn in to the narrator's mind and hear the story from her innermost thoughts and feelings. You will feel her frailty, her anxiety, as well as her sucesses. The stream of consciousness is crafted expertly. Within the first page you will feel consumed by "Evie" and will not be able to put it down.
The quality of the writing is absolutely wonderful. This book feeds the intellect and the soul, but be warned -- if you like "fluffy" books and literature that is primarily plot driven, this may not be the book for you. If you can't / don't understand Faulkner, you probably won't appreciate this book either. on Sale!
±1±: Now is the time The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake: A Novel Order Today!
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Over All Rating Reviews : Great Deal : $14.27
Date Created : Jun 16, 2010 06:11:11
The wondrous Aimee Bender conjures the lush and moving story of a girl whose magical gift is really a devastating curse.
On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein, a girl at the periphery of schoolyard games and her distracted parents’ attention, bites into her mother’s homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother’s emotions in the cake. She discovers this gift to her horror, for her mother—her cheerful, good-with-crafts, can-do mother—tastes of despair and desperation. Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes a peril and a threat to Rose.
The curse her gift has bestowed is the secret knowledge all families keep hidden—her mother’s life outside the home, her father’s detachment, her brother’s clash with the world. Yet as Rose grows up she learns to harness her gift and becomes aware that there are secrets even her taste buds cannot discern.
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is a luminous tale about the enormous difficulty of loving someone fully when you know too much about them. It is heartbreaking and funny, wise and sad, and confirms Aimee Bender’s place as “a writer who makes you grateful for the very existence of language” (San Francisco Chronicle).
±1±: Best Buy Aimee Bender writes a thought provoking novel The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. If one was to dissect each word or let each word stand on its own, it may appear obvious of what the premise of the storyline is about. Of course food has been used within literary terms as a metaphor of life, nourish, gluttony, hunger, i.e. feeds the mind, food fest galore for the mind. Main character Rose Edelstein has the knack of tasting emotions or empathizing with the people around that covers the five senses and culinary fetes that her mother attempts and succeeds. And as an observer she keeps things together within her dysfunctional family filled with numerous conflicts and dramas that focuses on her older brother Joseph, who is about six years her senior and his dilemmas are not always written in black and white with a cream filling inside like an Oreo cookie; the second section of the novel appropriately titled "Joseph," show the complexities and ironies that arise and the bizarre twists that Rose, her mother and father, and friend George encounter.
Indeed, the interesting part about the book is Rose but Joseph's character highlights the novel as well and adds the metaphysical, realism, and sublime elements to the character traits and storyline. It is obvious after the first few chapters that Joseph is special delicate creature who is in a world all his own and may also be compared to a lost soul or "space cadet" despite his quirkiness and wiz kid demeanor who had a tremendous interest in information and science, most importantly astronomy and associating at a young age with UCLA's department of cosmology and high hopes of entering USC and CalTech but happened to suffer from medical issues at a young age that did not appear to be specifically mentioned in the novel but suggested. He is highly intelligent but not as precocious as his sister who judges him as detached but little did she know he is aware of the environment around him as his 7th grade best friend George could understand as readers will see by the end of the book. While everyone worries where Joseph has disappeared, George remains calm and knows he is bound to turn up any moment.
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is one of those books that may take more than reading to understand the gist of the story. But after taking the time to interconnect the complex relationship that Rose, Joseph, and her parents possess, the book is insightful and is recommended for summer reading and after. on Sale!
