Charlotte Brontë makes her way to 21st-century New York City by way of Korea in this latest spin on Jane Eyre from first-time author Patricia Park. The title character is Jane Re, “a honhyol, a mixed-blood,” with a Korean mother and American father. As if the “Koreanish” Jane (as she describes herself) does not already feel like an outsider, her parents die, and she is shipped off to live with her gruff uncle in Flushing, Queens—an enclave that is “all Korean, all the time,” and where “your personal business was communal property.”

Re Jane is breezy and accessible, at its best when portraying Jane’s haplessness and frustration. “I traveled nearly seven thousand miles across the globe to escape societal censure only to end up in the second-largest Korean community in the Western World,” she says wryly of her childhood move to the U.S.

The Jane Eyre connection here is substantial (a key character even shares the pen name under which Brontë published her masterpiece), though not slavish, which makes sense given that Park’s interest in feminism goes beyond the Women’s Studies professor who plays an important role in the book.

Jane’s Rochester is an unhappily married Irish-Italian Brooklyn native who must also contend with a surly young daughter, although he moves a little more quickly than Brontë’s brooding hunk. Readers may differ on the ultimate plausibility of his relationship with our heroine, and occasionally Park’s chatty tone becomes flat or needlessly melodramatic. Nevertheless, Park offers real insight into assimilationist struggles in comments such as “Immigrant households did not talk about Derrida or The New York Review of Books. Conversation was a luxury, rendered in broken fits and starts.”

Some of Re Jane’s most intriguing sections unfold during an impulsive post-9/11 return to Seoul, where Jane lands a job teaching English, and where she must make a major decision about her love life, thus adding yet another layer of confusion to her sense of cultural conflict.

None of the conflicts here are resolved in particularly shocking ways, but Park’s portrait of Korean-American life feels authentic and is ultimately endearing. Charlotte Brontë would be proud.

This article was originally published in the May 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Tolstoy is famous for writing, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” What he doesn’t mention is that each member of the family can be happy and unhappy in their own individual ways. That’s where Angela Flournoy picks up in The Turner House, the story of a big African-American family struggling with the decision of what to do with their family home.

In a Detroit struck by poverty and violence live the Turners, a sprawling family of 13 children. The oldest and the youngest practically belong to different generations, different Detroits and different parents. Their mistakes and their lost hopes are the bonds that connect them to each other.

Flournoy doesn’t just detail the journey the family goes on together; she also lets us in on the problems each individual struggles with alone. Family is their support system, but that doesn’t mean they share everything. Sometimes family members only serve to make each Turner feel more alone with their personal weaknesses.

What makes The Turner House profound is its reality, its observation of a family so diverse and well-drawn that they seem real. Many books center on romantic love or parental love, but we rarely find such an honest portrait of what it means to be a sibling—defined by your differences as much as your similarities—as the one Flournoy gives us. The Turners are continually rebuilding their lives, re-establishing connections that get tangled, torn and broken. Their story is beautiful in the way family is beautiful: full of heartbreak and broken dreams, but ultimately connection and community, understanding and love.

This article was originally published in the April 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Venetia Stanley was a great beauty of her day, sought after by poets and painters eager to pay homage to her good looks. Her early death in 1633 has remained a mystery over the centuries, some accusing her husband, Sir Kenelm Digby, of murder and others ascribing her demise to the toxic beauty treatments she was rumored to have used. Hermione Eyre’s brilliant debut, Viper Wine, explores the perils of achieving beauty at all costs, set against a backdrop of the political and social upheaval of 17th-century London.

After years of marriage and motherhood, Venetia fears her looks are fading and turns to her husband’s alchemical experiments for a cure. When he refuses to help, she seeks out chemist Lancelot Choice, whose viper wine, a cordial distilled from snake blood, is said to invigorate the skin and restore youth. But the remedy takes a terrible toll. Meanwhile, other women in and around the court of Charles I seek similar cures, and the dangerous elixir becomes all the rage.

Eyre notes the obvious parallels between Venetia’s search for perfection and today’s obsession with youth by sprinkling the text with quotes on celebrity from the likes of Naomi Campbell and Andy Warhol, as well as mentioning modern beauty regimens with dangerous downsides, such as Botox and bee venom. Intensifying the novel’s postmodern edge, Digby’s thoughts are occasionally bombarded by 20th-century phenomena: He hears Joy Division at a courtly dance, quotes Neil Armstrong as he scans the heavens and perceives computer code in an alchemical text. Open to these dazzling wonders that flow to him, unbidden, across the centuries, Digby proves himself a true renaissance man, part of his world but anticipating our own.

Viper Wine occasionally bogs down in the detailed descriptions of Digby’s esoteric experiments, but Eyre’s stylish flair and sense of invention is truly impressive. Like Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, Viper Wine is a historic fantasy reminding us of the limitless reaches of the imagination.

This article was originally published in the April 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

There is a strong tradition of Irish writers—William Trevor, Edna O’Brien and Colm Tóibín come immediately to mind—who can turn the everyday details of an ordinary life into art. Add to these ranks Mary Costello, whose deceptively slender first novel, Academy Street, takes in the full measure of one woman’s quietly tragic life in fewer than 200 pages.

The novel begins and ends with a death at Easterfield, the Lohans’ big old house and farm in the west of Ireland. At age 3, young Tess does not fully understand the circumstances or the implications of her mother’s death, but she feels the loss deeply. A meditative and lonely child, she grows up alongside her older sisters and two brothers, her life unfolding in familiar patterns: She goes away for a time to boarding school, she moves to Dublin to study nursing, an older sister joins the Irish diaspora in New York, and Tess follows a few years later. Tess’ life in Manhattan continues largely in solitude, marked by a brief, hollow love affair and the demands of single motherhood at a time when there was little support for such a choice. As the years pass, the unimaginable will bring Tess to her knees emotionally, even as she continues to endure all with that distinctive variety of Irish fatalism.

Plot is largely secondary for Costello, who is more concerned with providing a portrait of the inner life, a thing she accomplishes with admirable deftness. Indeed, the external chronological touchstones—the Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK’s assassination, Patty Hearst, 9/11—sometimes seem like tacked on, unwelcome distractions, although the latter will play an essential role in Tess’ story. It is a cliché to call a novel haunting, but thanks to Costello’s graceful prose and emotional honesty, Academy Street—which won the Irish Book Award for novel of the year over such heavy-hitters as Tóibín and David Mitchell—certainly stays with you.

This article was originally published in the April 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The story of a young woman trying to make it in Hollywood is familiar to most. However, Shanna Mahin turns this common tale into a simultaneously heartbreaking and heartwarming story. Oh! You Pretty Things gives readers a glimpse of the destruction that celebrity (and the obsession with it) can cause in day-to-day life. Encompassing humor, wit, irony and sheer sass, this story shows that even in glitzy Hollywood, life can be filled with hardships.

We follow Jess Dunne on her journey from barista to B-list celebrity assistant to A-list celebrity assistant. She is a woman who actively chooses a complicated way of life. Whether it’s a complex mother-daughter relationship or an exhausting semi-friendship with her celebrity boss, Jess seems to always be either picking herself apart or letting other people do so. Although fiercely loyal and protective of her friendships and her bosses, Jess struggles to stand up for herself in ways both little and life-altering.

Oh! You Pretty Things is not only an accurate portrayal of life in Hollywood but also an accurate portrayal of life’s ups and downs. Though the setting is familiar, the plot developments are unique and surprising. Don’t expect a perfect Hollywood ending. Mahin’s intelligent and approachable story will grip you from beginning to end.

This article was originally published in the April 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Readers looking for another end of days, survivalist tale with the same trite conclusions will be out of luck with British author Claire Fuller’s debut novel, Our Endless Numbered Days.

Peggy Hillcoat is taken by her survivalist father, James, from their home in London when she is 8 years old. The year is 1976, and she is told that that rest of the world is destroyed, and her mother is dead. James takes Peggy away from everyone and everything she has ever known, to a hut in the middle of a European forest. Our Endless Numbered Days is the story of her life of survival there.  

Fuller, who worked at a marketing agency before becoming a writer, uses her sharp storytelling to give the reader a divergent take on post-apocalypse survival. Peggy’s life in the woods is not simply a struggle against nature, as one might imagine, but also a story of a child trying to make sense of growing up in isolation. 

The novel alternates between the years that Peggy and her father live in the woods and 1985, when 17-year-old Peggy is back at home and coming to terms with the lies her father has told. Perhaps my favorite part of the book is the end (now I sound trite), because Fuller once again defies reader expectations. This provocative book will inspire questions and discussion, and leave readers eager to see what Fuller does next.

So much can happen in one day. And when it comes to Eddie Joyce’s first novel, so much is remembered in one day: Small Mercies is the story of the Amedolas, an Irish-Italian family living on Staten Island. The story is set in the current day, but it stretches back through generations with a particular emphasis on September 11, 2001, the day they lost Bobby—he was a firefighter, but he was also a son, brother, father and husband.

Losing Bobby is the pebble dropped in the middle of this plotline—everything centers on that day, but its ripples extend into both the present and the past. This is an intergenerational story of family dynamics that’s layered, complicated and intensely readable.

Staten Island features as more than a setting. It’s the heart of the family, what they cling to for stability, especially after they lose Bobby. The fact that they all grew up watching New York City without being a part of it stands in harsh relief against the reality that their favorite son was lost protecting it. Firefighting was a family business, and the idea that you can save others but you can’t save yourself is a metaphor that informs the rest of the book.

Just as this family’s history is a huge part of their story, so are their shortcomings. Because the novel is told from the perspectives of different family members, we have a clear view into each person’s private sins. This isn’t a novel that paints people as saints and sinners; every character here comes complete with individual triumphs and failures. We see in detail the way coping mechanisms drive the Amedolas apart and bring them back together in a way that, far from being unique to them, is part of the fabric of every close family.

Kitty Miller is living the dream. OK, so maybe her life isn’t picture-perfect according to society’s standards; it’s 1962, and she’s an unmarried woman. But after a failed long-term relationship, Kitty has come to accept that life isn’t always meant to be as we imagine. Instead of being married with kids, she and her best friend, Frieda, own a bookshop in Denver. They’re not rich—in fact, sometimes it’s hard to make ends meet—but the pair is so close they refer to one another as Sister. It’s a good life.

Or is Katharyn Anderson living the dream? Although Katharyn once ran a successful business with Frieda, she has traded the nickname Kitty for the more grown-up Katharyn, and ceded her independence for a suburban home, husband and children. It seems she has it all.

In The Bookseller, debut novelist Cynthia Swanson portrays one character in two distinctive lives. When she goes to sleep each night, Kitty leaves her world as a bookseller and slides almost seamlessly into her dream life as Katharyn, aka Mrs. Anderson. But the more time Kitty spends in this other life, the clearer its imperfections become. Although she has the love of her life and a beautiful family, she has lost a lot along the way. 

“Living,” Swanson writes, “is not made up of details, but rather of highlights.” In The Bookseller, she combines the two to answer the question we so often ask ourselves: What if?

This article was originally published in the March 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

When Nica Baker, a gorgeous, popular 16-year-old, is found dead on the campus of her prestigious private high school, her family, friends and community are shocked and devastated. While the case is closed neatly and quickly—an awkward classmate with an unrequited crush and a bad temper—Nica’s older sister Grace has the sick suspicion that the obvious answer is not always the right one. She goes on a quest to find out what really happened to Nica—and ends up discovering far more than she ever wanted to know about her family, her friends and herself.

Lili Anolik’s Dark Rooms is an impressive, haunting debut. Her writing is fast-paced and decisive, her characters rich and nuanced. And while the bones of her story are familiar—a beautiful girl murdered in a seemingly safe community—its plot twists and turns are anything but. Could Jamie, Nica’s rich and charming on-again, off-again boyfriend, be her killer? Or what about Damon, a troubled student with an unusual connection to Nica? Or maybe it’s someone even closer to home—someone who knows both girls better than anyone. As she gets closer to solving her sister’s murder, Grace gets farther and farther away from the life she thought she knew.

Dark Rooms is at once a crime novel and a high school drama, with shades of both Gillian Flynn and Curtis Sittenfeld. It’s a story of life and death, perception and reality, and how to go on when your world shatters before your eyes. With complex characters and a multilayered narrative, it can be hard at times to know whom to root for; thankfully it’s equally difficult to put this stunning debut down.

This article was originally published in the March 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

New Orleans-based writer Tom Cooper’s The Marauders is a debut novel that does nothing in half measures. It isn’t afraid to take risks, dabble in darkness and skirt the edge of ruin, and this is what makes it such an exciting read.

Set in a bayou shrimping community still dealing with the fallout from Hurricane Katrina, The Marauders takes readers on a rollicking adventure deep into the heart of Louisiana’s marshes as well as some of the darkest corners of the human psyche. Featuring a colorful cast of characters—from identical twin marijuana moguls to a one-armed treasure hunter to a slick oil company rep trying to swindle his own mother—it tells the stories of folk on the fringes, many of whom can only find common ground in their shared desire to carve out a living (some noble, some less so) in their tiny corner of the world. Alas, as competing interests cause their lives to collide, only a few will succeed and not all will survive.

Brash and unapologetic, The Marauders is a thrill ride. The plot is brisk, the characters are captivating and the writing is lush and striking. Cooper’s writing is the kind a reader can happily get lost in, and his depictions of the Deep South are so evocative that if he ever gets tired of fiction, he might give travel writing a try. But The Marauders is such an impressive offering from an audacious new voice in fiction that one can only hope it is but the first of many. As far as bibliophilic treasure hunts go, this one is literary gold.

This article was originally published in the February 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Will’s entire world exists inside the walls of his house. Raised by an agoraphobic mother, he’s taught to fear the world outside—and the world inside, too, wearing a helmet constantly and donning body armor just to change a light bulb. He feels safe. Then he goes outside, and everything feels strange.

It doesn’t help that what he encounters really is bizarre: Neighborhood kids steal water hoses and make explosives, and he’s lied to by a boy he doesn’t know better than to trust. Despite its dangers, the outside attracts Will. Determined to solve a particular mystery in town, he forces himself and his mother to accept his going to school, walking and playing on the outside—even skateboarding.

Michael Christie, who was a professional skateboarder before turning to fiction, does an outstanding job exploring agoraphobia and panic disorders. He describes the “Black Lagoon” of depression that envelopes Will’s mother with remarkable insight and accuracy without either glorifying or trivializing her condition. The rest of the novel is fully drawn, too, including the psyches of Will, his friend Jonah and even the bullies. If I Fall, If I Die begins within the walls of a single home, but it eventually stretches to encompass an entire town, including its history and its mysteries.

Besides the obvious themes of leaving the nest and coming of age, this novel is about pushing boundaries and striving for change while understanding that the people we love may not be able to follow us. It’s about recognizing the beauty in new relationships even when they don’t turn out the way we plan. It’s about the ways we escape who our parents raised us to be—and the ways we’re inevitably drawn back into our histories anyway.

This article was originally published in the February 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.