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FictionLiterary FictionDebut FictionComing of Age

A Girl Within a Girl Within a Girl

A harrowing tale of sacrifice, survival and identity, Nanda Reddy’s A Girl Within a Girl Within a Girl presents an unvarnished look at how the American Dream can morph into a nightmare for immigrants.
A harrowing tale of sacrifice, survival and identity, Nanda Reddy’s A Girl Within a Girl Within a Girl presents an unvarnished look at how the American Dream can morph into a nightmare for immigrants.
FictionPopular FictionFamily Drama

I Leave It Up to You

You won’t forget Jinwoo Chong’s big-hearted, beautifully written I Leave It Up to You, about a son returning to his fractious but loving family following a two-year coma.
You won’t forget Jinwoo Chong’s big-hearted, beautifully written I Leave It Up to You, about a son returning to his fractious but loving family following a two-year coma.
FictionFamily DramaComing of Age

Red Dog Farm

A heartfelt coming-of-age story about a son leaving college to help on his father’s farm, Nathaniel Ian Miller’s Red Dog Farm is note-perfect in its evocative depiction of life in rural Iceland.
A heartfelt coming-of-age story about a son leaving college to help on his father’s farm, Nathaniel Ian Miller’s Red Dog Farm is note-perfect in its evocative depiction of life in rural Iceland.
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FictionPolitical FictionLiterary Fiction

The Unfolding

Review by Harvey Freedenberg

Ever since the publication of her first novel, Jack (1989), and continuing through her 2018 story collection, Days of Awe, A.M. Homes has focused with laserlike precision on some of the darkest corners of contemporary American life. It makes sense, then, that in her provocative novel The Unfolding, she would turn to a bitingly satirical exploration of our current political predicament. 

Homes’ novel smartly imagines the machinations of a shadowy group of rich and powerful men who organize for action in the aftermath of Barack Obama’s election in 2008. Calling themselves the “Forever Men,” they’re led by a character identified only as “the Big Guy,” who divides his time between a Wyoming ranch and a luxurious home in Palm Springs, California. There’s also a retired general with connections at the deepest levels of the American security establishment, a Texas judge and a “mad scientist” whose expertise includes a gift for spotting emerging trends.

When they’re not riding in a hot air balloon or participating in target practice, the men ponder in self-aggrandizing terms “how to reclaim our America, a traditional America that honors the dreams of our forefathers.” In truth, the heart of their project is ensuring the preservation of an American democracy that they believe is about “capitalism, guns, and lower taxes.” The suggestion of a “seamless transition unfolding in the corridors of power, a slow roll to the right that no one sees coming,” has an eerily familiar feel.

But even as the conspirators plot to wrest America from the Obama coalition and return it securely to the control of their fellow wealthy white men, the Big Guy must deal with a complicated assortment of challenges closer to home. His wife’s alcoholism is worsening, and his independent-minded 18-year-old daughter, safely ensconced in an all-girls boarding school in Virginia, is beginning to formulate her own ideas of how the world should to work. When the Big Guy is forced to reveal a long-buried family secret, his once-tidy life teeters on the edge of implosion. 

Homes ends her story on January 20, 2009, Obama’s inauguration day, before the group’s hostile takeover plan is actually set in motion. If only for that reason, The Unfolding is a novel that cries out for a sequel. On the other hand, Homes cannily suggests, maybe that sequel is playing out right before our eyes.

Through the story of a shadowy group of rich and powerful men who organize for action in the aftermath of Barack Obama's election in 2008, A.M. Homes offers a bitingly satirical exploration of our current political predicament.
FictionPopular Fiction

The Lost Ticket

Review by Thane Tierney

In Craigslist’s “Missed Connections” section, you can almost always find a titillating headline or two, something like “Goth Woman in Piggly Wiggly Produce Section” or “Saw You at Six Flags’ Drop of Doom, May 17.” We all have a story about the one that got away, but not everyone takes that obsession to the lengths the hero does in Freya Sampson’s charming second novel, The Lost Ticket.

Smitten with a young woman he met on London’s 88 bus line in 1962, Frank Weiss has spent a considerable portion of his adult life riding public transport in hopes of meeting her just once more. Only problem is, there are 9 million people in London, Frank doesn’t know the woman’s name, and the information he has on her (red hair, art student, bus rider) is several decades old. Oh, and one more problem: Frank is evincing the beginning stages of dementia, so if he’s going to find her while he still remembers her, the clock’s ticking pretty loudly. 

As luck would have it, the 88 bus affords Frank a second meet cute. This time, it’s a young woman named Libby Nicholls, who is in the midst of her own relationship crisis. Intrigued by Frank’s plight, she decides to distract herself from her own problems by taking on his. She enlists the help of Frank’s caregiver, Dylan, and his friend Esme, who has Down syndrome, to leaflet along the bus route in hopes of turning up a clue. This is how you find a lost cat, after all, so why not a lost love?

Meanwhile, Libby is thrown a few curveballs, both emotional and physical, that make her efforts for Frank more challenging. We discover that, just like unconsummated rendezvous, words left unspoken can provoke profound repercussions. And while all this is going down, occasional chapters introduce a character named Peggy, who may or may not be connected to—or even be—the object of Frank’s affection. 

Sampson’s true gift is bringing to life an improvised family of three-dimensional characters with real struggles and real humanity. In a way, The Lost Ticket is the ultimate literary British Invasion, uniting the Beatles’ “With a Little Help From My Friends” with the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” As Mick Jagger says, if you try sometimes, well, you might find you get what you need.

The Lost Ticket is the ultimate literary British Invasion, uniting the Beatles' "With a Little Help From My Friends" with the Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want."
Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

EEN THE WINES It probably started with Nora Ephron, and almost certainly reached a high point with Ruth Reichl, but in the last few years the recipe-studded novel/memoir call it the kitchen-counter novel has become a virtual genre. So many of them have been bubbling up on reading lists that news of another might give even the most adventurous palate pause.

And in the case of Secrets of the Tsil CafŽ, pause is not a bad idea, because the primary ingredient of many of the first recipes is hot chili peppers. Right off, that warns of a heavy knot of meaningful references as author Thomas Fox Averill, a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, blends savory, but spicy recipes into this novel of a hot-blooded family with two battling kitchens.

Indeed, the central metaphor of the story and even the title reference refer to the fiery ingredient. Chilis are Native American in the truest sense, as all hot or sweet peppers are derived from about six major types of capsicum that the indigenous Americans had already domesticated long before the Europeans arrived. The name Tsil comes from the god-avatar of the chili pepper in the ceremonial dances of the Hopi. Hot spices excite the soul, an underlying theme in this story of a battling family, but they also excite the body, one reason many passive contemplative sects in Asia abjure them.

The product of a cross-cultural family obsessed with food, Weston Tito begins his story by saying he was a seed in his parents’ kitchens plural in both cases. Weston’s mother is Italian and works the successful catering business BuenAppeTito upstairs; downstairs, his father, who is fixated on cooking only indigenous foods “Santa Fe style” (they live in Kansas City), runs the Tsil Cafe, a restaurant as iconoclastic as it is tear-inducingly spicy. Wes’ crib and later his cot are literally in his mother’s kitchen (in the cabinets, for a while), and she teaches him her “vocabulary,” the names of foods, by letting him taste them like Annie Sullivan pouring water over Helen Keller’s hands. His father refuses him entry into his own obsessive domain, almost a holy order, until he can claim to enjoy such un-childlike flavors as habanero and anchovy. After that, like a knight’s apprentice, he is allowed to help slice and chop ingredients carry his own sword, in effect.

One of the points of contention between Wes’ hot-blooded parents is the local restaurant critic, an old admirer of his mother’s (and as a critic myself, I have to say Averill’s early enunciation of the critic’s sometimes pompous philosophy and his fictional reviews made me wince). Nevertheless, the critic, who acts first as a teeter-totter between the two adults, ultimately becomes a sort of bridge, giving Wes his first opportunity to critique to see the food of both parents objectively and start to develop his own concept of food.

Over the years, Wes absorbs a rich stew of influences and emotions from his mixed-ethnic family, along with the various Mexican employees of the cafe who serve as surrogate relatives and even a Native American graduate student who takes him foraging for cactus and cattails and invites him to a corn dance. Ultimately, he will even marry the critic’s female successor.

So pervasive is food in this coming-of-age novel that the recipes become a reflection of life’s shifting flavors in Averill’s kitchen novel. The almost magic-realism intensity of the flavor descriptions and the author’s habit of dropping in dictionary definitions of various terms such as “turkey,” “mescal” and “maple” re-emphasizes the native quality of the ingredients. The narrator’s entire life is lived in the study, anecdotal and later academic, of foods; ultimately he will become a chef as well, melding his parents’ Old World and New World cuisines into a One-World cuisine.

The ideal pairing: spicy chilis with cool Chardonnay Even when I was mentally trying to prepare the hottest recipes from the book (and while some seem excessive, they are clearly workable), I could imagine starting off by myself in the kitchen with a chilly, acidic white wine. While I’m not usually a Chardonnay fan, at least not those oaky enough to drive a stake through a vampire’s heart, I’m much taken with the bargain of the summer: the Santa Julia Vineyards 2000 Chardonnay from the Argentine Mendoza. Moderately light, with easy citrus flavors, crisp apple peel, Japanese apple-pear and just a little burnt sugar, it’s one of the most attractive and modestly swaggery $7 wines I’ve had in a long time. I’m not sure how it would work with the stuffed prunes, but many of the salsas would be proud of the match.

Eve Zibart is the restaurant critic for The Washington Post’s weekend section. This column reflects her dual interest in wine and travel.

EEN THE WINES It probably started with Nora Ephron, and almost certainly reached a high point with Ruth Reichl, but in the last few years the recipe-studded novel/memoir call it the kitchen-counter novel has become a virtual genre. So many of them have been bubbling…
FictionHistorical Fiction

The House of Fortune

Review by Sarah McCraw Crow

Jessie Burton returns to the world of her atmospheric novel The Miniaturist with a sequel, The House of Fortune, set in 1705 Amsterdam.

First, a little about The Miniaturist, which introduces readers to Nella Brandt when she’s 18 years old. Recently married to a trader named Johannes, Nella is a country girl who feels out of place in Amsterdam, a powerful international trade center with a gossipy, moralistic core. Nella finds Johannes and the rest of her new family—sister-in-law Marin, servant Otto and cook Cornelia—to be confusing and distant. As a distraction, Johannes gives Nella a cabinet house, a miniature version of their home, which she furnishes by ordering from a miniaturist. The miniaturist, in turn, conveys that she knows secrets about Nella’s new family, a menacing development.

The House of Fortune picks up the story nearly two decades later, opening on the 18th birthday of Thea, daughter of Otto and Marin, who died in childbirth. By now, Thea’s aunt, Nella, is a longtime widow, and Otto is the head of the household. Thea is obsessed with the theater, spending as much time as she can at the city’s playhouse with her actor friend Rebecca and new love, Walter, a set painter. 

But the Brandt household is in trouble: Otto has lost his job in the Dutch East India Company—as a Black man, he was never allowed to rise to a decent position—and Nella must sell off the house’s paintings and furniture to pay expenses. Nella believes the family’s best hope is for Thea to marry a man with a fortune, but as a biracial young woman in white merchant-class Amsterdam, Thea’s marriage prospects are uncertain. Rounding out the cast are botanist Caspar Witsen, socialite Clara Sarragon and the mysterious miniaturist, who once again watches the Brandt family, this time focusing on Thea.  

The story alternates between Nella’s and Thea’s perspectives. Nella worries about Thea’s future while considering her own past, particularly when she left home for the city. Thea schemes to follow Walter wherever he may be heading next, but she also yearns to understand the broodings of her secretive father and aunt, and their reasons for never talking about Marin or Johannes.

Throughout The House of Fortune, Burton beautifully evokes golden-age Amsterdam. It’s as though she has seamlessly incorporated aspects of memorable Dutch still lifes, portraits and landscape paintings into the narrative. If The House of Fortune doesn’t feature quite the same level of sinister gothic atmosphere and suspenseful plotting as The Miniaturist, it’s still a satisfying family drama.

Jessie Burton beautifully evokes golden-age Amsterdam in her sequel to The Miniaturist.
FictionHistorical Fiction

The Marriage Portrait

Review by Lauren Bufferd

Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet hit at the right moment; her 2020 novel about the tragic death of William Shakespeare’s son from the bubonic plague made for compelling reading as many of us quarantined during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her next novel, The Marriage Portrait, is a vivid depiction of the harsh manners and rigid expectations for women within ducal courts in 16th-century Italy.

The Marriage Portrait is based on the life of Lucrezia de’Medici, born into one of Italy’s most illustrious families. With parents eager to strengthen ties to other noble Italian houses, Lucrezia’s older sister Maria is betrothed to Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara. When Maria dies of an unspecified illness just days before the wedding, 15-year-old Lucrezia is offered in her place. Less than a year later, Lucrezia is dead, probably from tuberculosis—but at the time, it was alleged that she was murdered by her husband. This long-lasting rumor became the basis of Robert Browning’s dramatic 1842 poem “My Last Duchess,” which begins, “That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall, / Looking as if she were alive.”

As imagined by O’Farrell, Lucrezia is a free spirit and artist, attuned to the natural world and accepted, if not warmly embraced, by her large Florentine family. Once married, she is out of her league in the tense, gossipy Ferrara household, where she is frightened by her husband’s mercurial moods and his sisters’ cagey secrets. Lucrezia quickly realizes that the longer it takes her to produce an heir, the more danger she is in. As she sits for a formal marriage portrait and cautiously makes a connection with the artist’s apprentice, she remains not only on the periphery of the court but also fearful for her life.   

O’Farrell is a marvelous stylist, and The Marriage Portrait is full of the same kinds of intense details that made Hamnet come alive. Her characters are captivating and believable, and the landscape of Renaissance Italy is a veritable gift to the senses, so powerfully does O’Farrell evoke the sights, sounds and smells of forest, castle and barnyard. 

From Lucrezia’s early encounters with a tiger in her father’s menagerie to her final days in a wooded fortress, The Marriage Portrait will please readers who relish good historical fiction as well as anyone looking to the past to better understand the present.

Maggie O'Farrell is a marvelous stylist, and The Marriage Portrait is full of the same kinds of intense details that made Hamnet come alive.
FictionFamily Saga

The Fortunes of Jaded Women

Review by Stephenie Harrison

A war bubbles at the core of The Fortunes of Jaded Women, but perhaps not the one you’d expect. Rather than retreading the conflict that has been the focus of most Vietnam-centric literature for the past 70 years, Vietnamese American author Carolyn Huynh offers up a refreshingly buoyant and irreverent debut novel about a fiery group of estranged mothers and daughters. 

Ever since their ancestor Oanh left her husband for another man, the Duong women have been cursed to be unlucky in love and only give birth to daughters. Oanh’s current living relatives are therefore able to find professional success but never lasting love. Despite all living in Orange County, California, sisters Mai, Minh and Khuy n haven’t spoken to one another—or to their mother—for the last 10 years. The sisters’ relationships with their own daughters are hardly any better.

All this changes when Mai visits her trusted psychic adviser in Hawaii and is rocked by the revelation that this will be the year her family experiences a marriage, a funeral and the birth of a son. But Mai is warned that if she isn’t careful, it will also be the year she loses everything. The Fortunes of Jaded Women chronicles the riotous year that ensues as the fractious and feisty Duong women finally reconnect, heal their wounds and forge a new future as a family.

Celebrating Vietnamese culture and community, The Fortunes of Jaded Women is a delight that rises above mere frothy literary confection. The sprinkling of fantastical elements and abundance of sisterly squabbles and scandals keep things juicy and bring plenty of laughs, but the characters are the real stars of the show. Each woman is joyfully rendered and fully developed, offering a welcome contrast to cliched depictions of meek and docile Asian women, and a powerful subversion of monolithic depictions of a people who have for too long been solely defined by tragedy. 

The Duong women have fire in their bellies, desire in their hearts and the grit needed to overcome any obstacle. The Fortunes of Jaded Women will certainly appeal to fans of over-the-top excess a la Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians, but readers who love rich explorations of thorny mother-daughter relationships and the ways we weather trauma and grief will also find much to enjoy.

Celebrating Vietnamese culture and community, The Fortunes of Jaded Women is a delight that rises above mere frothy literary confection.
FictionHistorical Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

he World War II era was filled with turmoil and sorrow for everyone involved. In Ann Howard Creel’s debut novel, The Magic of Ordinary Days, she convincingly relates how life on the home front could be just as unsettling as the tumult on the battlefields. For Olivia Dunne, times were particularly trying as she worked through her own emotional upheaval, first dealing with the death of her beloved mother and her alienation from her minister father, then discovering that she is pregnant after a careless act of passion. To maintain her family’s respectable reputation, Olivia is forced to leave her home in Denver to enter into an arranged marriage with Ray Singleton, a farmer who lives on the prairies of southern Colorado. Her dreams of becoming an archaeologist are dashed as she sets her sights on a future of being a wife and mother.

The Singleton farm is remote, as is its owner. Ray, although a kind man, is used to living on his own and has difficulty dealing with another person in his home. It’s up to Olivia to establish her own routines, as Ray returns to the fields to work his crops of sugar beets, onions and beans. The ladies of the community church try to include Olivia in their activities. But they are reserved, and she knows they realize she is carrying another man’s child. It isn’t until the arrival of the Japanese farm workers from a nearby internment camp that Olivia finds friendship in the form of two teenaged sisters, Lorelei and Rose Umahara. Like Olivia, the sisters must learn to adapt to their confinement while their passion for living seeks other outlets.

In The Magic of Ordinary Days, Creel has captured a unique page in history as she weaves a tale inspired by actual events. She includes many little-known details of the Japanese-American internment camps and German POW camps that were scattered throughout the country. Her use of the desolate, dusty prairie setting of southern Colorado echoes the desperation felt by her character, Olivia. As a former resident of Colorado, I well recognized the small farm communities of La Junta, Rocky Ford and Trinidad.

This is a gentle but powerful novel, combining a story of bittersweet love with a poignant account of the journey toward self-realization and acceptance.

Sharon Galligar Chance is a book reviewer in Wichita Falls, Texas.

he World War II era was filled with turmoil and sorrow for everyone involved. In Ann Howard Creel's debut novel, The Magic of Ordinary Days, she convincingly relates how life on the home front could be just as unsettling as the tumult on the battlefields.…
Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

very bachelor actor-bartender living in New York City needs a female friend to serve as a sounding-board, advisor and drill sergeant. Johnny Downs, the protagonist of James Wolcott’s The Catsitters, has a doozy in Darlene Rider. Though she lives in Georgia and dispenses counsel over the phone, Darlene’s presence in this novel reverberates loudly. She advises Johnny on dating, analyzes Polaroid photos he sends of his potential love interests and ships a pair of eccentric women to watch his cat while he’s out of town. Despite Darlene’s protestations to the contrary, Johnny seems to do OK for himself, as a succession of attractive women filter in and out of his life (though more often out than in). By observing Johnny’s daily habits, we become familiar with the routine of the ordinary actor tend bar at parties, audition, shoot corny commercials and repeat the cycle ad nauseum. The story itself seems simple enough, revolving around Johnny’s search for romance and all the usual complications accompanying such a quest. Yet in the hands of Wolcott, literary critic for Vanity Fair, a possibly mundane plot becomes incessantly interesting. This is a funny book, almost anthropological in its insights into contemporary mating rituals. Wolcott offers balanced perspectives from both genders, with extended sections of dialogue between Johnny and Darlene; the author refuses to choose sides, instead allowing us to witness a sardonic battle of the sexes. Readers who have participated in the dating game will chuckle knowingly with nearly every page. Not only does Johnny’s narrative voice sparkle with a dry, almost deadpan wit, but this intermittently employed actor proves a genuinely likable guy: funny, sincere, a cat lover someone we can root for.

A host of characters season the story: Gleason, Johnny’s best friend and fellow actor who drops sarcastic comments regarding romance and alcohol, and Claudia, the stunning, haughty actress who haunts Johnny with her frequent appearances and disappearances. All help push the narrative forward, adding generous dollops of quirkiness to the book. Wolcott doesn’t pretend to have any great answers to the question what is love? but he does offer us a few suggestions, neatly packaged as an entertaining comic novel.

Michael Paulson teaches English in Baltimore.

very bachelor actor-bartender living in New York City needs a female friend to serve as a sounding-board, advisor and drill sergeant. Johnny Downs, the protagonist of James Wolcott's The Catsitters, has a doozy in Darlene Rider. Though she lives in Georgia and dispenses counsel over…
FictionWomen's Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

hose of you who read Pearl Cleage’s What Looks Like Crazy On An Ordinary Day (an Oprah book club selection) will remember the protagonist’s sister, Joyce Mitchell, who ran a social club of sorts for teenaged moms. Cleage’s new novel, I Wish I Had a Red Dress, continues the story of Joyce and her girls and the men who shake up their worlds for good and for ill.

A resident of a rural African-American town called Idlewild, Joyce has eaten much bitterness. She’s not only a widow, but her children have also died, and when the book opens she’s in the process of being humiliated by a legislative committee for daring to seek state money for her girls. She’s teaching them, with varying degrees of success, to be free and strong women, which largely means crawling out from under the thumbs of their abusive or irresponsible boyfriends. Since the boyfriends tend to ratchet up their abuse during the Superbowl, Joyce stages an anti-Superbowl party which evolves into the “The Sewing Circus Film Festival for Free Women,” featuring films by black directors with strong black women as lead characters. Of course the town’s young men resent the idea of their girlfriends focusing on something other than them, and an event occurs during the festival that underscores the book’s theme of men inevitably barging in to mess up women’s happiness.

Cleage writes in a brisk and credible style, creating instantly recognizable characters. Some of the chapters are no more than a page long, and all of them have titles, some delicious, like “This Denzel Thing,” “When Junior Started Trippin’.” and “The Specificity of Snowflakes.” The girls, especially the bright and responsible Tomika, are valiant, and the boys, especially the brutish Lattimore brothers, are wonderfully hateful. Joyce, though warm-hearted and giving, still has a core of resentment against the perfidy of men, though she was married to a loving and responsible one for many years. Yet Cleage herself is unflagging in her belief in the inherent strength of women. I Wish I Had a Red Dress is a sensitive story of sisterhood, courage and self-determination, always leavened with touches of humor and compassion.

Arlene McKanic writes from Jamaica, New York.

hose of you who read Pearl Cleage's What Looks Like Crazy On An Ordinary Day (an Oprah book club selection) will remember the protagonist's sister, Joyce Mitchell, who ran a social club of sorts for teenaged moms. Cleage's new novel, I Wish I Had a…
FictionLiterary Fiction

Sacrificio

Review by Laura Sackton

In his third novel, Brooklyn-based Cuban translator and author Ernesto Mestre-Reed delves into Fidel Castro-era Cuba in a beguiling, meandering story that unfolds in dense and dizzying prose. Though challenging at times, Sacrificio is an invitation to slow down and pay attention. The rewards are plentiful for readers willing to give themselves over to a narrative that twists through Havana’s streets, churches, hotels, backyard restaurants and many secrets.

In the mid-1990s, Rafa, a Cuban teenager from the countryside, makes his way to Havana, where he finds a job at a tiny restaurant run by middle-aged Cecilia and her two sons. Rafa falls in love with the older son, Nicolás, though his intimate conversations with the younger son, Renato, have a more profound effect on Rafa’s life. 

In the aftermath of Nicolás’ death, Renato goes missing from the state-run “AIDS sanitarium” where he’s been sent, and Rafa sets out to find him. He soon becomes entangled in a complicated web of government agents, counterrevolutionaries and the mysterious workings of a secret city-within-the-city. He discovers the brothers’ connection to “los injected ones,” a group of radical counterrevolutionaries determined to overthrow the Castro government via a delusional plan to spread HIV across the island.

That’s a lot of plot, but it’s only the beginning, as Sacrificio is Dickensian in both scope and feel. Observant Rafa narrates in the first person, but he is long-winded and unreliable, often drifting into discursive stories told to him by others. The historical backdrop—including the 1997 hotel bombings throughout Havana and Pope John Paul II’s 1998 visit to Cuba—looms large, and these events have cosmic consequences. Rafa recounts his own involvement with mild detachment, like someone looking back on experiences they’re not yet sure how to interpret. Fear, betrayal, longing, confusion, love, the desire for justice, the need to be seen, despair and determination—these emotions run beneath Rafa’s surface, ready to be excavated by attentive readers.

Contemporary literature often feels like it’s moving as fast as contemporary society, as if our culture of instant gratification has changed not only the way we read but also the way we write. While there’s certainly a place for that kind of literature, Sacrificio is a reminder that other kinds of books are worthwhile as well: slow stories, disorienting yet compelling books that require work, old-school dramas that nevertheless speak to the fraught complexities of our current political reality.

For readers willing to give themselves over to a narrative that twists and turns through Havana's streets, churches, hotels, backyard restaurants and many secrets, the rewards of Sacrificio are plentiful.
Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

ike most of America, Cape Cod has seen the consumer spectacle wash up on its shores. Determined to help nature reclaim her course, one Cape resident decides to blow up some of the area’s most expensive beachfront homes.

Spectacular Happiness, a provocative new novel by Peter Kramer, tells the story of a middle-aged junior college English instructor struggling to reclaim the ideals of his youth. Once again Kramer, a psychiatrist who wrote the nonfiction bestsellers Listening to Prozac and Should You Leave?, digs into the human psyche, this time in a work of fiction.

Chip Samuels, a handyman and teacher with radical notions, lives in the small home his immigrant father built alongside the enormous estates on the Cape. Also living nearby is Sukey Kuykendahl, Samuels’ former flame and current partner in crime. The two were linked by a love affair between their parents, and their devotion has endured into adulthood.

More important is Samuels’ devotion to his wife Anais and the idealistic life they once shared. In a home full of free love and free spirits, Anais developed her pottery while striking out for months at a time to discover her soul. But as Anais’ line of pottery grows in popularity, the link between the couple blurs.

Written as a journal for Samuels’ teenage son, the novel intentionally glosses over the most private details of his life as a terrorist bomber. Unlike a typical beach read packed with riveting action scenes, Kramer’s novel delivers with psychological insights. Motivated by ideals, Sukey and Samuels set out to change the minds of rich vacationers and national consumers. Hunted by the FBI and the scandal-driven media, Samuels turns to his journal to explain his actions to his son and the wife he once cherished. The result is a revealing look into the criminal mind and the genius required to out-maneuver pursuing law enforcement officers.

Kramer builds his work on the mind’s desire. It is this desire that leads Samuels to risk all for the sake of gaining back everything, particularly his son. In the end, Spectacular Happiness is an explosion of ideals and a blasting comment on our era of conspicuous consumption.

Amber Stephens is a freelance writer in Columbus, Ohio.

ike most of America, Cape Cod has seen the consumer spectacle wash up on its shores. Determined to help nature reclaim her course, one Cape resident decides to blow up some of the area's most expensive beachfront homes.

Spectacular Happiness, a provocative…
FictionWomen's Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

ith a bolt-from-the-blue opening sentence, “They died instantly,” Jacquelyn Mitchard grabs hold of her readers and pulls them into a story of love, heartache, tragedy and triumph in her latest novel, A Theory of Relativity. As evidenced in her previous bestsellers, The Deep End of the Ocean and The Most Wanted, Mitchard proves beyond a doubt that she ranks as a premier storyteller.

Keefer Kathyrn Nye, only a year old when her parents die in a car crash near Madison, Wisconsin, is the focal point of a bitter, prolonged custody battle. Keefer’s bachelor uncle, 24-year-old science teacher Gordon McKenna, seems the most appropriate custodian for his niece, since he helped his parents care for the little girl while his sister battled cancer. However, Keefer’s paternal grandparents, the affluent and aggressive Ray and Diane Nye, challenge his claim, asserting that their deceased son would want his child’s godparents (the Nye’s niece and her husband) to have custody.

The fact that Georgia and Gordon were adopted from different birth parents plays a prominent role in the proceedings, forcing the McKennas to challenge a grievously unfair law that distinguishes between “blood” and adopted relatives. After exhaustive social studies and hearings in which Gordon has to prove that a single man can make a good father, a judge rules that in the best interest of Keefer, she should live with her godparents. As Gordon and his mother Lorraine draw up plans to challenge the adoption, they find that even with an expeditious legislative victory to close the loophole, their hard work fails to bring a satisfying closure to the lawsuit. The decision stands, and the parties must come to a mutual agreement on what’s best for Keefer.

Inspired by a real-life case, Mitchard’s novel draws on her own experience as an adoptive parent to lend realism and emotion to the story. Once again, she captures her reader’s hearts, drains them emotionally and then rewards them with a surprising twist.

Sharon Galligar Chance writes from Wichita Falls, Texas.

ith a bolt-from-the-blue opening sentence, "They died instantly," Jacquelyn Mitchard grabs hold of her readers and pulls them into a story of love, heartache, tragedy and triumph in her latest novel, A Theory of Relativity. As evidenced in her previous bestsellers, The Deep End of…
FictionLiterary FictionComing of Age

My Government Means to Kill Me

Review by Eric A. Ponce

With his debut novel, TV writer and producer Rasheed Newson (“Bel-Air,” “Narcos”) breathes life into an important pocket of LGBTQ+ history: the political revolution that occurred in 1980s New York City. 

My Government Means to Kill Me follows Trey, a young gay Black man who escapes his suffocating “bougie” life in Indianapolis to find personal freedom in New York City. At first blush, Trey seems like another naive dreamer who will learn all his lessons the hard way, but it’s soon clear that he’s complex and adaptable, and his first-person perspective strikes a perfect mix of witty and vulnerable. He’s running as fast and far as he can from the tragedy of his home life, including his brother’s death and his family’s cruel rejection of his sexuality. He’s well aware of the responsibility of taking control of his own destiny, and he earns his stripes, figuring out how to survive while making friends and enemies along the way.

Newson’s prose is engaging and entertaining, and he captures the dynamics of found families through supporting characters such as Angie, a ferocious and bighearted lesbian who runs a home for AIDS patients, and Gregory, Trey’s troubled friend and potential lover with whom readers will undoubtedly form a love-hate relationship. Their world is a heart-wrenching tableau that offers no easy answers or easy feelings, reflecting the harsh reality of life during the AIDS crisis and the continuing fight for civil rights.

The most notable aspect of My Government Means to Kill Me is the presence of historical figures at key points in the story. Newson weaves important civil rights and LGBTQ+ activists such as Dorothy Cotton and Larry Kramer into the narrative to bolster Trey’s development. As Trey becomes a founding member of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), readers get a glimpse into the rich and boisterous political environment of the ’80s. Newsom balances these moments of representation and recognition with appearances from more nefarious figures like “racist slumlord” Fred Trump, who tries to evict Trey and his friends from their home. 

Newson capitalizes on the many powers of historical fiction while ensuring that Trey’s story never becomes stuffy or predictable. My Government Means to Kill Me is proof that writers can revere and play with history at the same time.

Offering a glimpse into the rich and boisterous political environment of the 1980s, My Government Means to Kill Me is proof that writers can revere and play with history at the same time.

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