Tag: fiction

#11 A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab

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22055262I discovered this trilogy by V.E. Schwab on Goodreads and loved the cover treatments so decided to give the books a try.

About the series, from V.E. Schwab’s website: “A fantasy series that takes place in a series of parallel Londons—where magic thrives, starves, or lies forgotten, and follows the last of a line of blood mages and a pickpocket from Georgian London as they combine forces to save the worlds—all of them.”

A Darker Shade of Magic (#1 in the series) is a rollicking good time of a book about a blood magician named Kell, and a kick-ass heroine pickpocket named Delilah. They join forces to defeat those out to destroy Kell and the London he inhabits. Time/space travel, political intrigue and evil plots, spells, adventure, and (you guys!) MAGIC.

#10 Ways to Disappear by Idra Novey

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I can’t say that I’d put Ways to Disappear into your hand and tell you “you have to read this.” It just wasn’t that book for me.

What it is: a beautifully written book about a Brazilian author who goes missing, last seen climbing into a tree with a suitcase and vanishing, and the American translator who comes to Brazil to search for her. You get the literary meta-ness of a writer (Novey) writing about an author and her translator, the texts that they share and the stories they put out-the author’s in Portuguese, the author/translator’s in English-into the world. When she gets to Rio, the translator begins to question: how well does she really know this author whose work she has lived, breathed, and worked on for years, with whom she has spent much time lingering over exacting words, discussing the fabric of her stories? Where does the author draw the line between herself and the characters she creates? How can the translator “read” the act of the author’s disappearance? When you’ve put a body of writing out into the world, do you ever really disappear?

While I didn’t love this book, I did enjoy it. I appreciated the elegant writing, the story, the characters, and the thoughts it provoked.

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#8 History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund

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30183198This debut book of fiction by writer Emily Fridlund is a stunner.

It’s a classic coming-of-age story. High school student Linda doesn’t fit it. Like so many high school kids who feel like they’re the wrong age at the wrong time in the wrong place, she lives the life of an outsider. Her peers keep their distance at school, and she lives a long way from anything with her odd parents. When a family with a young boy, Paul, moves in across the lake, Linda starts to babysit, forging a relationship with the boy and his parents. From page one we know that something devastating has happened to Paul, a knowledge which drives this elegant, sad, austere story to the end.

I really love Fridlund’s writing, there were so many sentences and passages in History of Wolves that made me go “wow.” Some coming-of-age books feel like replicas of stories we’ve all read/heard before, but this one stands out. From the beginning, Fridlund constructs a narrative built on dramatic tension, with the reader constantly questioning “what the fuck happened to that kid?!” The snowy backwoods setting evokes isolation and loneliness, and the characters are unique, complex, totally flawed.

I can’t wait to read what Fridlund comes out with next.

#7 Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera

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This book was passed along to me by my husband. It won the 2016 Best Translated Book Award for fiction, and the fact that Francisco Goldman calls Herrera “Mexico’s greatest novelist” would suggest that the book is something quite special, a memorable read. I finished it with a “meh” and a shrug. With all the praise this book received, I was left wondering “did I miss something?!”

If you read it and loved it, I’d love to hear your thoughts…

 

#4 A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

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Looking for a great book to take on vacation? Or just a great read? Here you go.

This is the funny, poignant story of Ove, an old curmudgeon who trolls his neighborhood looking for miscreants, and lives to follow the rules and expects everyone else to as well. He’s unrelenting, grumpy, and inflexible. Much to his chagrin, when a young family moves in next door his life gets turned upside down, his routines are disrupted, his past is brought back to life, lessons are learned.

This is such a page-turner, and Ove is a character you won’t soon forget.

#3 We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

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18114291We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves sat on my bookshelf for a year, recommended by Doug, a friend who loved it. The reason I didn’t pick it up sooner? Book snobbery… It’s by the author of The Jane Austen Book Club. (Which, for the record, I haven’t read, but I think it was turned into a super cheesy movie, right?) Did I care that it was a finalist for the Booker Prize? Nope.

Well, I finally decided to give it a try and, surprise!, I really loved it too.

The story centers on the family of Rosemary Cooke, her older brother, Lowell, and her sister, Fern. Rosemary’s childhood is the same as most, she’s quirky, playful and talkative, she loves her siblings; her childhood is also so very different – her sister Fern is a chimpanzee. (This is not a big reveal. The back cover copy on the book will tell you as much.) Within this story of a complicated family, Fowler weaves in themes of animal cruelty, human nature, love and trust, memory, and the imperfectness of childhood.

 

#2 News of the World by Paulette Jiles

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25817493 A galley of News of the World sat on my shelves for almost a year and, for whatever reason, I just didn’t pick it up. But I’m glad I finally did, it’s a charming book.

The premise: “In the aftermath of the American Civil War, an aging itinerant news reader agrees to transport a young captive of the Kiowa back to her people in this morally complex, multi-layered novel of historical fiction from the author of Enemy Women that explores the boundaries of family, responsibility, honor, and trust.”

At first I was apprehensive that the young girl/older man narrative would veer into cringe-worthy sexual territory, but thankfully it never did. The aging news reader character, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, surprised and delighted me. Kidd’s view of the world is wider than the characters around him, he reads the news aloud to crowds, verbally presenting the world to those who cannot read and/or have no access to newspapers. Because of this world view, his lens positions the story within a bigger historical context and provides insight into that particular time in that part of the Southwest. We get a glimpse of the eradication of Native American tribes, the ramifications of slavery, the appropriation of Mexico, the violent grab for land, power, people, money, all at the complex intersection of new and old, of civilization and wilderness.

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#1 Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett

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27774632I really wanted to like Pond. It came highly recommended by a great local bookseller, the cover and overall book package is lovely, and the blurbs sang the book’s praises.

“A sharp, funny, and eccentric debut …” from The New York Times book review.

“Dazzling…” from O, the Oprah Magazine.

“Innovative, beguiling…meditative…” Los Angeles Times.

I just can’t get on the praise train with this book. While there were moments of really nice writing, short passages that made me pause and re-read, ultimately I was bored by the narrator’s interior voice, felt constrained by her solitude (I know this is the author’s intention, to make the reader share an intimate and intensely confined space with the narrator, but I didn’t enjoy it and failed to meditate on the blandness of the narrator’s life in that space) and couldn’t find the dazzling or the humor.