Sing Her Down by Ivy Pochoda
Read as part of CBR16Bingo: rage. The rage of women, ex-cons, survivors is centered in this book. The opening chapter contains a monologue on female rage. You ever have an author that you think you should like more? You just try and try with them but they can’t put it together for you? That was Ivy Pochoda until These Women, which I read a couple months ago and will absolutely be in my Best of 2024, with a great shot to place in the top 5. […]
These Women by Ivy Pochoda
The thing I most admire about Ivy Pochoda’s These Women is how both feet are firmly in two worlds that she’s willing to write about. In making this a character-driven crime tale with a focus on the sex workers (maybe some of them victimized?), we get a clear picture about the unglamorous life of sex work, especially sex work in low income areas. The need for cash, the dehumanization, the stigma…and yet, these women just go about their business dealing with it all. There’s no glorification or […]
The Ghost Writer by Loreth Anne White
The Other Side of the Road by Andrea Bartz
Scorpions by Rachel Howzell Hall
Everywhere You Look by Liv Constantine
The Bad Friend by Caroline Kepnes
Jackrabbit Skin by Ivy Pochoda
OK this whole Amazon Kindle and Audible collection is called “Never Tell”. It’s supposed to be about secrets, lies, and mind games. Sounds intriguing, right? Well some of these six stories were really good – like five stars good. And some of them were “but why?” mediocre. Like “I guess this story had to be told, but why?” I’ll rank them in order from five stars to “but why” (according to me of course). Grace Logan, a successful ghostwriter is lured in by a new […]
The Diving Pool – 2/5 stars Of course the issue with any collection of fiction where the works weren’t intended to be placed side by side is that you are left holding the reins as to how they might possibly be connected. All three of these “novellas” (they are definitely just longish short stories) have a spare detached narrator focused mostly on observing than acting. All three have the same kind of spare language that other of her works are known for. And while “The […]
