This is a genuine novel—it allows the writer to introduce us to people we would not know otherwise, and we see them struggle for love and forgiveness, for money and stability. The writer creates a vision of community that is both redemptive and convincing (I must say, it brought tears to my eyes several times: but thinking of it now, I am a bit wary of that effect). Rather than a comedy of remarriage, it is a drama of remarriage, showing the tests people must go through to know, accept, and love each other.
Category: Book Reviews
Book Reviews
A review of In Falling Snow by Mary-Rose MacColl
In Falling Snow is a great book with a little bit of everything—history, family drama, romance, lighter moments with Iris and Violet, and even a little bit of mystery. MacColl notes that the telling of the story itself and capturing the spirit of Royaumont and the women who ran in was more important than scrutinizing every historical fact and figure, and I feel she pulled this off very well.
A review of Motherline by Lisa Rosen
Motherline is a bit like a coming-of-age story—Maggie is facing first-time motherhood, saying goodbye to merely being a daughter and granddaughter and now having to face responsibility for another human being, thus continuing the “motherline” of generations of women that had gone before her, while Katharine is still grieving the son that she lost but trying to move forward into her new role as grandmother (and eventual family matriarch) in her own way.
Imagination, Wit, and Madness: The Wapshot Scandal, a novel by John Cheever
John Cheever is a wonderful writer, and his novel The Wapshot Scandal contains observed life and imagined adventure, bringing together ancient rituals and bourgeois affections and habits, private desires and deceptions and public reputations, romance called to reconcile a reality that resists, supernatural suspicions that subvert reason, and mournful, surprisingly poetic interrogations, as Cheever examines family and communal life. The novel does not contain stories that offer easy comfort, though their intimate cruelty and sensual pleasure and melancholy do entertain.
A review of Cry Blue Murder by Kim Kane and Marion Roberts
Unique in its telling, the story unfolds as a series of legal documents, police interviews and statements, pathology reports and the e-mail correspondence between the two Year 9 private school students. From within these Police investigation reports and statements, clues are unlocked and our suspicions focus upon a particular suspect who is a member of the school community.
The Price of Isolation: George Eliot’s Silas Marner
It is a remarkable portrait of social misunderstanding, one that is so clear it illuminates current, similar but subtler suspicion of odd individuals in our own world. The money that Marner makes becomes important to him—obvious reward for his work. He is transformed by his isolation, his work, his money, his (often inhuman or at least unsocial) concerns: achieving independence but a spiritual withering.
Interview with Jaye Ford
The author of Blood Secret reads from and talks about her new book, about the incident that gave rise to it, her main characters, her local settings, her struggles with the writing, her work in progress, and lots more.
A Review of The Silent Wife By A.S.A. Harrison
The Silent Wife is not a long book—a little over 200 pages—but Harrison manages to fit a gripping tale into those few pages. The story is told almost entirely in present tense, so it gives the reader an almost unsettling feeling of voyeurism—we’re absolutely watching these characters self-destruct in real time. There is some backstory offered as a way to explain how Todd and Jodi were shaped by their families (clearly dysfunctional in Todd’s case; less obvious in Jodi’s).
A review of Torn Apart: The Abduction of Gillian Curtis by Marta Sprout
The author doesn’t quite deliver the complex character development that could have been achieved with the scintillating story line, however, what she does deliver is a heartwarming, fun tale about the people who come into our lives when we least expect it and how they can embed themselves in our hearts.
A review of Blood Secret by Jaye Ford
From start to finish, the writing remains taut and powerful. Ford rarely slows the pace with overt description, but the scene setting is done brilliantly through the eyes of the characters, combined with action.