Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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About ElCicco

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Married, mom of two, history PhD, feminist. I've been participating in Cannonball Read since CBR4. I love to read, and writing reviews keeps me from reading without thinking. I feel like I owe it to the authors who entertain me to savor their creations. It's like slowing down and enjoying a delicious meal instead of bolting your food. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: ElCicco's Quick Questions interview.)

ElCicco's Reviews:

Excellent Fantasy Series to Get Hooked On

The Black Tides of Heaven (Tensorate Series) and The Red Threads of Fortune by Jy Yang

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With their Tensorate series, author Jy Yang has created a world divided between those who have and those who lack the ability to manipulate the physical world through their own formidable powers. The “haves,” known as Tensors, are able to use their mind/spirit to influence the workings of the Slack, ie, earth (gravity), water (motion), fire (temperature), metal (electricity), and forest (flesh and blood). In this world, the “haves” rule with an iron fist and little mercy, but even so, amongst these privileged individuals there […]

The pursuit of happiness

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In the introduction to Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison writes about the death of her father and the inspiration for the novel. She found herself talking to him and wondering what the men he had known were really like. For the first time, with Song of Solomon, Morrison writes from her male characters’ perspective, and these male characters are focused on flight, on some journey of their own, a pursuit after something that might bring them happiness. Macon Dead is a prosperous businessman in the […]

Why We Cannonball

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Our motto here at Cannonball Read is “Sticking it to cancer one book at a time,” and I think I have found a novel that epitomizes that sentiment. Zinzi Clemmons’ debut novel What We Lose is about losing your mother to cancer. Narrator Thandi was a college student when her mother died. Through Thandi’s recollections as an adult, the reader gets glimpses of how her family, her friends, her socio-economic background, and race intersect with her experience of her mother’s illness and death, and with […]

Timely Novel on Race from almost 90 Years Ago

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Nella Larsen’s novel Passing, published in 1929, is a short but powerful and provocative tale about race and racism. The two main characters, Irene and Clare, are childhood friends whose lives diverged in their teen years but intersect again as adults. Both women are fair skinned enough to pass as white. Clare has chosen to hide her past and her race from her wealthy white husband. Irene has married a successful black doctor and has a seemingly good life in Harlem. When their paths meet […]

My Possession Obsession

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Possession is a mesmerizing story, or two stories, steeped in mystery, secrecy and discovery. Set in both the modern world and the Victorian age, Possession tells the parallel stories of characters whose intellectual pursuits bring them together but also spark jealousies alongside great creativity. Byatt’s writing is genius. The detail and creativity, the imagination, she brings to her work is simply breathtaking. The novel begins in London, circa 1990. Roland is a scholar/academic, living with longtime girlfriend Val in rather dire straits. His field is […]

Now and at the hour of our death …

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The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott is a delight to read. McDermott’s writing is warm and evocative, featuring vivid, relatable characters and spaces in which one longs to linger. Brooklyn and the Catholic Church of the 1920s come alive through her novel. At the same time, McDermott uses these very real people and the situations they face to challenge the reader to think about life, death, suffering and redemption. McDermott presents us with a world that we see almost exclusively from the perspective of women […]



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