I’ve written fairly extensively about how much I dislike unreliable narrators, and how books written to damage the psyche are, I think, grotesque and antithetical to everything I want in a book. The narrator here is struggling through a fairly difficult time in her life, and therefore can’t always be relied on to objectively perceive her reality – but I think it’s handled in a way that is fair to the characters, and it’s done in service to the story, not as some cheap ploy […]
Throwing a kitten out a window was only a warning shot.
Halfway through Moonglow, I caught myself with my hand over my mouth, trying to keep my breath inside my body because the prose was so exceptionally beautiful. I had my worries before reading this book. I have only recently discovered Chabon, and have only otherwise read The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, which was so stunning that it made me want to punch something. There is a lot of hype surrounding Moonglow, and even I only got it by accident from the library on a strict, one […]
If you are different from a person everyone agrees is wonderful, it means you are somehow wrong.
This was a tough one, emotionally. One True Thing is the story of a brilliant young woman “with her whole life ahead of her” who is guilted by her controlling and emotionally-arrested father into leaving her life behind to come home and care for her dying mother. And it covers so much ground in a very gentle but sad way: gender roles, parenting, family dynamic, literature and poetry, agency, friendship, romance, and ultimately, euthanasia. At the very beginning of the story, Ellen tells us that […]
End of Watch
End of Watch. Once again, I’m sorry to say that there’s not much good to be said about this one. It’s a real downer, and I waited several weeks after I read it to write this review, because I didn’t want to ruin it for anyone. Problem is, I also don’t want to have to reread it, and unlike some other books, my head doesn’t want to hold on to it. My major issues were how irritating it was that King returned to drugging people […]
When not reading plot synopses bites you in the ass
I saw a book with a monster in the cover. I saw a book with “monster” in the title. I saw a book that was popular. And I never bothered to find out what it was about. “I should be more open”, I said. “Try new things,” I said. “Expand your horizons,” I said. Oh yeah. Read the kinds of books I never would have had I not joined this wonderful community. Which has been a largely successful modus operandi in my three years, here. Even […]
At Least the Baby Doesn’t Die
It’s a darned good thing I have cold — the kind where your eyes water and your sinuses itch — because at least I can blame my now-puffy eyes on that instead of the fact that When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi, made me cry like a kid. Paul is — was — a talented neurosurgeon who found out he had cancer at the tail-end of his residency at Stanford. Because cutting on people eventually gets to be out of the question when you’re terminally […]
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