FOSTER CAREBOOK REVIEW Edna wastes no time drawing a hot bath for the child then scraping grime out from under nails, washing her hair, cleaning her ears. The girl describes the bath: “Then she makes me stand and soaps me all over with a cloth. Her hands are like my mother’s hand but there is […]
FOSTER BY CLAIRE KEEGAN–A BOOK REVIEW Read More »
MY MONTICELLOBOOK REVIEW Jocelyn Johnson’s novella, My Monticello, is a soul-nourishing story that begins on a spring night in the near-future after the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville in 2017. White nationalists have returned to town. They are burning down houses and brutally attacking people of color. Da’ Naisha Love, a descendant of Thomas
BOOK REVIEW: MY MONTICELLO BY JOCELYN NICOLE JOHNSON Read More »
LILY’S PROMISEBOOK REVIEW Lily’s Promise is a great read on so many levels. The book’s namesake, Lily, has just lost her beloved father to an illness that taxed family’s resources. She and her mother, an immigration lawyer, move to a smaller house in a different neighborhood. Lily had been home schooled, taught by her father.
Review of LILY\’S PROMISE by Katherine Erskine Read More »
A MOST PECULIAR BOOKBOOK REVIEW As a child, when I thought about the origins of the Bible, I pictured an old, white-robed, balding guy sitting at a long wooden table with scrolls piled up around him. He is surrounded by fluffy clouds and a few helpful cherubs. His look is pensive. His quill pen is
A MOST PECULIAR BOOK–BOOK REVIEW Read More »
THE COLLAPSIBLE MANNEQUINBOOK REVIEW Written by Charlotte Matthews, The Collapsible Mannequin is a delightfully quirky novel. The chapters alternate between Clarence, a twelve-year-old child, and his mother, Sarah. They live over the Gateway Rent-to-Own Store in Rolla, Missouri. Clarence desperately wants to know the identity and location of his father. Sarah recoils the few times
Book Review: The Collapsible Mannequin by Charlotte Matthews Read More »
THE WRONG KIND OF WOMANBOOK REVIEW Sarah McCraw Crow’s novel transports the reader to the 1970’s at a fictional college similar to Dartmouth. The era is turbulent, both culturally and politically, much like America today. The parallels between now and then are uncanny: a sharply divided nation experiencing a tsunami of discord. Some people push
BOOK REVIEW The Wrong Kind of Woman by Sarah McCraw Crow Read More »
HALFBOOK REVIEW I read Sharon Harrigan’s novel, HALF, in two sittings. It was that good. HALF is a story about identical twins named Artis and Paula, named for Zeus’s twins, Artemis and Apollo. They live with a father who is a monster and a mother who enables him. Told in the first-person plural, Harrigan credibly
Book Review: HALF by Sharon Harrigan Read More »
EVERYONE BRAVE IS FORGIVEN Everyone Brave is Forgivenis a book you should read if you would like to nourish your brain. Just about every sentence is deliciously well written. The novel is set in London and Malta during World War II and addresses the themes of class, race, and the morality of war. Eighteen-year-old Mary,
Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave Book Review Read More »
A WOMAN IS NO MANBOOK REVIEW “I was born without a voice, one cold overcast day in Brooklyn, New York. No one ever spoke of my condition. I did not know I was mute until years later, when I opened my mouth to ask for what I wanted and realized no one could her me.
Book Review: A Woman is No Man Read More »
THE STORY OF ARTHUR TRULUVBOOK REVIEW Are you looking for a pleasant summer read? Consider The Story of Arthur Truluvby Elizabeth Berg. Each day, eighty-five-year old Arthur Moses eats his lunch by the graveside of his wife, Nola, who died six months before. As he walks into the cemetery and passes other headstones, he vividly
Book Review: The Story of Arthur Truluv Read More »