Morality Play is another jewelbox novel – sparse, elegant, compact. There is a simplicity and a brevity to the story – it takes place over two weeks – that could feel insufficient, but doesn’t. This could be a longer book, but the sketchbook quality of it fits the time and story. The story is that of a young medieval priest, not without sin, and fairly self-aware. He’s a wanderer, restless and hungry, who stumbles upon a scene of death. A band of players in the […]
Impuse Buys Aren’t Always a Bad Idea
If nothing else, this book is a strong indication as to why I am pretty much constantly broke.
Drama without Passion
This is a fairly well-written but slow-paced story that takes place in the tiny town of Witless Bay, Newfoundland, surrounding a handful of colorful characters who struggle to make sense of their lives with relatively little connection to the outside world. Touches of magical realism combine with a certain bleakness of spirit to make for a story which has fascinating aspects to it, but which ultimately left me somewhat cold. Fabian is the product of a faltering marriage, who early on discovers that his […]
Badkittyuno’s Review #4: The Spectacular Now by Tim Tharp
My sister and I have very similar taste in books, and we share quite a bit — especially memoirs by funny chicks and YA. In fact, she’s on CBR this year, so you’ll probably notice that we review many of the same books. We are going to have to agree to disagree on this one, however, because she loved it, and I couldn’t get past my desire to throw the narrator through a plate-glass window. Sutter Keely is a high school student in Oklahoma who […]
Badkittyuno’s Review #2: Surfacing by Margaret Atwood
“From any rational point of view I am absurd; but there are no longer any rational points of view.” The premise of Surfacing is simple: a young woman returns to her childhood home — a cabin in the woods of Canada — to find her father, who has gone missing. For moral support, she brings along her boyfriend and two friends, a husband and wife. Her boyfriend and the male friend are concurrently filming scenes for series of random images they plan to create. The […]
Tampa
Tampa is the story of a young, gorgeous Middle School teacher and her attempts to seduce young waifish boys. Tampa is also a very hard book to read. Don’t get me wrong, the author has a gift of words. Her craft is precise and evocative. She effectively creates a chilling portrait of a predator, utterly selfish and unconcerned with the damage she radiates to all those close to her. I walked away knowing this was just a preliminary chapter in the life of a sociopath, […]