Nest is the debut work by author Esther Ehrlich, and it is a touching, tender piece of children’s fiction. Sixth grader Naomi “Chirp” Orenstein lives on cozy Cape Cod with her family – Mom, Dad, older sister, Rachel – and always has. And she has no idea just how many things in her comfortable life are about to change, when her mom falls ill and things start unraveling. The book is split into two halves – The first half of the book is set in […]
House. Lake. Dirt. Woods. AND REPEAT.
Ah this book. Last year, it was everywhere I turned. It was on list after list after list of recommendations, of mid year and year end round ups. It was hotly anticipated and has been highly lauded. So even though it wasn’t really something I would normally go after, I thought I would see what all the fuss was about. And as unwieldy as it is, I do really like the title. It’s not yet published in the UK, so I imported it via a […]
Dark Love Letter
“To know what a person has done, and to know who a person is, are very different things.” I have had a bit of luck with first time authors of late, and Hannah Kent is no exception. Her debut work, Burial Rites, is a gripping novel- all mood and emotion. It’s a story gaining speed like a stone rolling downhill, for there is only one way to go. Ms. Kent writes in Burial Rites about the last instance of capital punishment in Iceland. But I […]
A Beautifully Frustrating Read
Tell the Wolves I’m Home is the first-person narrative of June Elbus, a shy and standoffish fourteen-year-old living in late 1980s New York City suburbs. She idolizes her Uncle Finn, whom is her only friend and confidant, and she is completely crushed when he dies of AIDS, a still unknown disease at that point save the damning stigma to the gay community. She feels completely alone in the world until she meets Toby, a friend of Finn who shared a similar closeness and bond. As […]
No Frills
This book was on many Best lists in the year it was published. Published two years after Room, it would be tough not to say Donoghue’s utterly excellent novel didn’t influence McCleen, as here we are with another narrator who also happens to be a damaged child with no concept of the real world she happens to live in. There though, all comparisons end. Judith’s mother died shortly after giving birth to her and she has been raised by her father alone. As devout Jehovah’s Witnesses, Judith […]
Here we are, all thinking that it’s the Zombies we’re going to have to protect our brains from, but what if it’s really our computers?
This technological thriller is the kind of book that is written to terrify you into not wanting to so much as glance at your smart phone, lest it attack. AKA, the PERFECT kind of book to be reading on your Kindle late at night; AKA the book my 5th-grade-teaching, technophobe, grammarian grandmother would have agreed with 5000%. It’s a book that takes a serious look at the dependency of people on technology and one of the (oh so numerous ways) that can come back to […]
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