Edna Ferber was once the most famous female novelist in the United States. A member of the famed Algonquin Table, Ferber wrote several novels that were turned into classic movies, including Showboat, Giant, and Cimarron. Ferber’s So Big won the 1925 Pulitzer Prize for literature. I’m not sure why her novels get so little attention these days. This is the first that I have read, and I am probably going to try a few more. I found So Big to be a timely and relevant […]
A Book for Women’s History Month
This battle of wills was real and she would win. She would give herself fully. This moment was falling in love. [from “A High-Grade Bitch Sits Down for Lunch” about Beryl Markham] The sunrise is beautiful … but it will never be enough. She was questioning then, as she does now: what makes you empty and what makes you full? [from “Hazel Eaton and the Wall of Death”] Almost Famous Women is a collection of fictional short stories about real women who have appeared in […]
Anger Management
Disgruntled is the story of Kenya Curtis, her family, and her community in West Philly. They are, as the title suggests, disgruntled and with good reason. The story begins in the early 1980s when Kenya is about 10 and follows her for almost a decade. Solomon tells a rich, detailed, powerful story in a mere 287 pages and shows wit, intelligence and humor throughout. Themes dealing with race and class feature prominently and should engender lively discussion among readers. The novel begins with “The Way […]
There’s No Place Like Home
This 2014 National Book Award Finalist is a beautiful affirmation of hope in the face of devastating loss and upheaval. Station Eleven is often characterized as an apocalyptic novel, but I believe this term is too limiting and does a disservice to the author. While the destruction of civilization is at the core of the plot, Mandel is more concerned with the creation of a new world than the destruction of the old one. This is a novel about resilience, about knowing what to hold […]
In the Bleak Mid-Winter
I’ve now read all of two Edith Wharton novels and she is fast becoming one of my favorite writers. With beautiful evocative prose, Wharton creates the socially circumscribed world of early 20th-century East Coast America, a bleak place where romantic tragedies occur. In The House of Mirth, the main character Lily Bart was a beautiful young woman whose family status gave her access to upper class New York society but whose sex and poverty severely limited her ability to function successfully there. In Ethan Frome, […]
The Real World: Little House on the Prairie
I think I read all of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House” books when I was a kid and I watched the TV show for at least a few years when it ran. While I enjoyed the novels and the TV show, I don’t remember re-reading or re-watching them, so I am what you might call a casual fan as opposed to a fanatic. Still, when I read last summer that the “true story” of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s life — in her own words — was […]
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