Category: Literary Fiction Reviews

Great new giveaway

We have a copy of Love, Only Better by Paulette Stout to give away!

To win, sign up for our Free Newsletter on the right-hand side of the site and enter via the newsletter. Winner will be chosen by the end of September from subscribers who enter via the newsletter. Good luck!

A review of Admit This to No One by Leslie Pietrzyk

What really unifies this collection is all the characters who are in denial and/or honestly trying to suss out who they really are, how they fit into their bureaucracies, their families, the society in general, their authentic selves. It’s a very contemporary collection, too, with references to January 6 and a character named “The Dealmaker” who is plainly Donald Trump.

An Appreciation of Zora Neale Hurston and Their Eyes Were Watching God

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston, an appreciator of different kinds of language and literature, a modernist who remembered tradition, describes Janie Crawford’s stifling life and surprising growth with language that is, as needed, confiding, folksy, general, poetic, philosophical, or startlingly specific. 

A review of Sparring Partners by Charles Rammelkamp

Sparring Partners is only as much about boxing as Moby-Dick is about whaling.  Like any true work of art, it’s about life, its fleeting glory, its many sadnesses, its long decline, and finally its inevitable disappearance.  In the end it’s about accepting that we all fall and break apart, and as such, it’s a terrific read, well worth your time.

A review of More Lies by Richard James Allen

There is always a degree of artifice in the process of creating a narrative. A story must be constructed, and the many and multiple perspectives of reality fixed into something linear and sensical, which is, in its way, antithetical to the reality of life. Allen plays with this notion, weaving together multiple narrative threads into a story that sets itself up as a noir thriller with an engaging tagline: a writer held hostage by a beautiful woman, forced to type on his typewriter as a decoy to an assassination.

New giveaway!

We have a copy of The Accidental Suffragist by Galia Gichon to give away!

To win, sign up for our Free Newsletter on the right hand side of the site and enter via the newsletter. Winner will be chosen by the end of August from subscribers who enter via the newsletter. Good luck!

A review of The Way of the Saints by Elizabeth Engelman

This is a stunning book, even if sometimes bleak, about a family struggling to transcend its own sometimes cryptic and often brutal history, as well as the history of their natural land. This is not a light and fluffy book, but its harshness and intensity are part of what makes it such a great read. And, as mentioned before, the writing itself is eloquent and gorgeous. The lyrical, precise prose in The Way of the Saints transforms the story into literature. 

A review of The Firebird by Saikat Majumdar

And then I read the novel again and again, awestruck, shedding tears each time I read of Garima’s sad demise. The theatre-halls were either being sold out by the owners to predatory realtors or to rich business magnates who razed the hall to put up a zany shopping mall there. It was crucial times for theatre-halls then, no doubt.

A review of Closer to Fine by Jodi S. Rosenfeld

Dr. Rosenfeld’s novel is informative and interesting on the subjects of Judaism, Psychology, and same sex relationships. I was charmed by Rachel’s envisioning of God as a woman angel whose patchwork wings are made up of one’s glimpses of the divine.  Another excellent idea is presented in the novel – that after a break-up, a woman should buy herself a ring to symbolize her commitment to herself as her own best friend.