Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Being defiant can be a good thing sometimes,”

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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Purple Hibiscus is a coming-of-age story and Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche’s debut novel. It is the story of fifteen-year-old Kambili and her older brother Jaja who lead a privileged life in Enugu, Nigeria. In some ways they are completely shielded from the troubles of the world. Yet, it is revealed rather quickly that things are less perfect than they appear. Although her Papa is generous and well respected, he is fanatically religious and tyrannical at home—a home that is silent and suffocating. As the country begins […]

Speaking a universal language

How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa

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Thammavongsa is a Laotian-Canadian writer and her collection of short stories focus on Laotian immigrants and their children in ways poignant, funny and heartbreaking. Her characters tend to be lower class, aspiring to be middle-class, striving for a better life. For the most part, Thammavongsa isn’t focused directly on the aspiring part, but the small interactions, misinterpretations and obsessions that her characters experience. Her stories really draw on threads of race, class and gender. There are 14 short stories in the collection, and as with […]

Jane Eyre meets H.P. Lovecraft

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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I am a big fan of gothic fiction reinterpreted in postcolonial settings, so this was right up my alley.  Moreno-Garcia’s novel follows Noemi Taboada, an upper class university student in 1950s Mexico City. When her father receives a strange letter from Noemi’s cousin, Catalina, Noemi goes to visit Catalina in the remote mining town where she lives with her husband Virgil’s family. Granted limited access to her cousin, who is said to be ‘recovering’, Noemi spends a growing amount of time with Virgil’s family, including […]

Wait for it, wait for it. . .

Good Behavior by Molly Keane

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As we meet Aroon St. Charles, she has just served a lovely luncheon of delicate rabbit’s broth to her very elderly mother.  Alas, the elder Mrs. St. Charles can’t abide even the scent of the stuff, and promptly keels over and dies.  Not to let such a delicious treat go to waste, Aroon finishes it off.  Well, now, that seems a little cold-blooded, no?  Ah, but richly deserved. Aroon was been born into the impoverished Irish gentry.  They are down to slowly selling off the […]

oh Sally, I don’t know about this one

Beautiful World, Where are You by Sally Rooney

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At times transcendent, but at others cringe-worthy. In Beautiful World, Where Are You Sally Rooney crawls so far into her own butthole that she manages to shout out of her mouth “do not look at my talking butthole! You don’t know me!”- and once in a while she says something so beautiful that you wind up saying “thank you so much, butthole!”. Reading this book was a journey, to say the least. Originally, I picked it up on Pub Day and tore right in; I adored Normal […]

Down among a bait and switch

Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seannan Maguire

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This book explores the origin story of Jack and Jill, twin sisters from Every Heart a Doorway. The novella starts from pre-birth all the way through Jack and Jill finding and then fleeing The Moors. Along the way we meet the worst parents in the world who didn’t want children but wanted a perfect photograph of children; The Master, a vampire who rules the Moors; Dr. Bleak, mad scientist who pushes the boundaries of science going so far as to raise the dead; and many of […]



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