Fiction book reviews archive | Page 60 of 452

by Kelly Koepke

ulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker’s writing has a way of creeping up on you, taking you unawares, and affecting you long after you’ve put the book on the shelf. This collection of short stories, a work of “mostly fiction,” begins and ends with semi-autobiographical recollections of a failed yet compelling marriage. Walker pushes us headlong into the difficulties and pleasures of relationships confounded by the frustrations of race, children, and varying expectations of what relationships should be. The movement of the book carries us through several episodes, each inhabited by wounded people who carry the scars, some old and shiny and some unhealed, inflicted both by loved ones and by society.

There is Rosa, a writer misunderstood by and alienated from her family, who is admonished not to put family matters in her writing. But Rosa’s curse is “never to be able to forget, truly, but only to appear to forget. And then to record what she could not forget.” There are Orelia and John, a couple who, although they understand each other deeply, constantly underestimate each other’s ability to forgive. There is Anne, a passionate woman whose “Grandma,” the voice of conscience and ideas, brings her closer to herself and others. There is also Girl, who introduces her mother to lesbian pornography and wonders about the intolerance still found in the South. Although not always set in the South, the idea of the South, with its hot steamy summers and underlying violence, provides the sense of place for these characters and shapes their interactions.

These stories offer brief glimpses into lives both familiar and unfamiliar. The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart captures moments of clarity about others and ourselves. Many times this clarity is won with consequences both painful and joyful. We are reminded that life is fragile, but that with love, we can move forward and heal our wounded souls. Walker’s dedication, “To the American race,” signals hope that we will find the way forward, but a reminder that it will come only after grief and healing.

Kelly Koepke is a freelance writer in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

ulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker's writing has a way of creeping up on you, taking you unawares, and affecting you long after you've put the book on the shelf. This collection of short stories, a work of "mostly fiction," begins and ends with semi-autobiographical recollections…

Fiction, Historical Fiction

Fiction Historical Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

by Lloyd Armour

n his new novel, Where I’m Bound, Allen Ballard does a masterful job of filling in the most underreported annals of the Civil War, the fighting exploits of the black soldiers of the Union Army.

These soldiers were under more than one gun, since their capture meant almost certain death by hanging or the firing squad. Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, told his generals that officers of black regiments were to be “put to death” at the discretion of a military court. The black soldiers were to be returned to their masters, sold, or put to work helping the Confederate troops.

What usually happened was that black troops were hanged or shot when captured. At Fort Pillow, for instance, black soldiers surrendered their arms after being promised that all who did so would be treated as prisoners of war. Instead they were shot “without mercy,” according to eyewitnesses.

Where I’m Bound tells the dramatic story of black cavalry scout Joe Duckett, whose regiment roamed the Mississippi Delta, seeking slaves held by the Confederates and trying to keep vital waterways open for Union gunboats. The pictures of war are dramatic as seen through the eyes of black slaves who tried to escape to freedom and the troops who were fighting for the same freedom. It was not a pretty war for most, and cruelty was not the sole transgression of the Confederate troops. This is the first novel by Ballard, who teaches history and African-American studies at the State University of New York at Albany. He has written two nonfiction books on African-American history. Most of Ballard’s novel is historically correct, although he has fudged a bit for the sake of greater realism here and there.

Where I’m Boundis an absorbing story that will touch the reader in different ways, but it will entertain and educate about a war that is history, if it is, indeed, sad history.

Where I’m Bound should be required reading for true Civil War buffs, but it is well worthwhile for those who simply like a well-told story.

Lloyd Armour is a former newspaper editor.

n his new novel, Where I'm Bound, Allen Ballard does a masterful job of filling in the most underreported annals of the Civil War, the fighting exploits of the black soldiers of the Union Army.

These soldiers were under more than one…

Fiction, Literary Fiction

Fiction Literary Fiction

The Hummingbird

Review by Michael Magras

by Michael Magras

When one looks back upon a life, one remembers it as a series of noncontiguous fragments, with each discrete moment forming a picture of a person. Italian writer Sandro Veronesi knows this instinctively. In The Hummingbird, he presents just such a puzzle to create a unique portrait of an enigma of a man.

In a narrative that moves through seven decades, from 1959 to 2030, Veronesi chronicles the life of Marco Carrera, an ophthalmologist in the Italian village of Bolgheri. His mother nicknamed him “the hummingbird” because, until age 14, he was worryingly shorter than his peers. But Marco resembles a hummingbird not just in his childhood stature but also, as one character puts it, “because all [his] energy is spent keeping still.”

Nevertheless, much happens to this supposedly fixed entity. The book starts in 1999, when a therapist who has been treating Marco’s wife, Marina, risks his career to tell Marco, “I have reason to believe you may be in grave danger.”

In chapters that incorporate text messages, emails, phone conversations, love letters and even poetry, Veronesi describes the events that shape Marco’s life, including his and his wife’s infidelities; his five-decade correspondence with a woman he loved since he was 20; the death of Marco’s sister and his estrangement from his brother; the difficulties facing his daughter, Adele, who met with a child psychologist when she was little because she felt she had a restrictive thread attached to her back; and Marco’s later guardianship of Adele’s daughter, Miraijin.

The Hummingbird is a moving, black-humored work about family and the tragedies born of time and poor decisions. Veronesi has created complicated characters that don’t always behave nobly, are products of their time and are, from a literary standpoint, the richer for it. As the omniscient narrator observes, “There are those who—not moving at all—still manage to cover great distances.” That’s the message of this wise book: A hummingbird may seem stationary, but in its way, it can cover a lot of ground.

The complicated characters in Sandro Veronesi’s novel don’t always behave nobly and are, from a literary standpoint, the richer for it.

Fiction

Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

by Amber Stephens

he small town of Halley’s Landing is unexceptional in most respects. Its main attractions are the site of a supposed touchdown by its namesake comet, an old canal, and a celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation every eighth of August. But the eclectic inhabitants of Halley’s Landing are the town’s real hallmarks.

In An Eighth of August by Dawn Turner Trice, family matriarch Cora Riley Hoskins welcomes family and friends to her large three-story house every year for the homecoming celebration. It’s a party marked by good food, thanksgiving, and town events. Some years are more memorable than others, and a select few are not to be forgotten, no matter how painful.

Set in 1986, the story weaves together a chorus of narrative voices, including the head-strong Flossie Jo Penticott and her spindly sister-in-law Thelma Gray. There’s also wayward Pepper, loyal Uncle Herbert, confused Sweet Alma, and saucy May Ruth. Together they tell the story of a family coming to terms with a tragic event and the healing power of forgiveness.

Trice, author of Only Twice I’ve Wished for Heaven, probes deeply into the question of what makes a family. She blurs the color line with the inclusion of a white British woman running away from her own family traumas into an African-American family.

The novel flashes back to 1973, when Sweet Alma was a pregnant teenager, disappointing her mother’s dreams. It retells the choices made by Flossie Jo to keep her daughter respectable and recalls the family tragedy of 1985. But the novel is also the story of May Ruth and her journey from a married woman with a child to a drinking bird-watcher saved by Cora.

Because the story does not focus on one main character, the novel continuously evolves as the central tale unfolds. Each contributor gives it an added depth and sense of community. Trice’s writing style and chapter headings keep readers from getting lost in the various narratives.

An enjoyable novel with a cacophony of voices, An Eighth of August is a sometimes humorous, insightful tale of family, community, and homecoming. Already compared to Gloria Naylor, author of The Women of Brewster Place, Trice has cemented her reputation as an able chronicler of the African-American experience.

Amber Stephens is a freelance writer in Columbus, Ohio.

he small town of Halley's Landing is unexceptional in most respects. Its main attractions are the site of a supposed touchdown by its namesake comet, an old canal, and a celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation every eighth of August. But the eclectic inhabitants of Halley's…

Fiction, Historical Fiction

Fiction Historical Fiction

The Magnolia Palace

Review by Freya Sachs

by Freya Sachs

When I was a kid, I had fantasies of what life must be like to live inside a museum. What stories and secrets of art might I discover? In The Magnolia Palace, Fiona Davis textures such imaginings, setting her novel inside the Frick mansion and alternating between two storylines in 1919 and 1966.

The novel opens in a moment of loss: A famous model named Lillian Carter, who has posed for countless sculptures that adorn New York City landmarks, loses her mother to the Spanish flu in 1919. While Lillian is trying to navigate the complexities of the world, she finds herself caught in an imbroglio, and she runs from the scandal straight to the Frick family home. There she becomes the private secretary to Helen Frick, the challenging daughter of the man who would later transform his mansion into a museum.

Lillian’s story unfolds alongside that of Veronica Weber, a British model in the 1960s who, during a photo shoot at the Frick Collection, gets snowed in and finds herself on quite an adventure.

Within this home and museum, Davis builds a whole world that’s rife with secrets and stories. The novel moves at an engaging pace, with questions waiting to be answered at each turn. Davis knows exactly how to structure a story and how to switch between timelines; even if sometimes you aren’t quite ready to make the jump, you must, in order to find out how it all connects.

A captivating story whose characters are richly drawn, The Magnolia Palace pays particular attention to those who might go unnoticed: the deaf private secretary, the museum intern, the organ player. We discover their private lives and public exposures, which reveal the daily messiness of human lives, the construction of the self and the truths we try so hard to hide.

Bestselling author Fiona Davis discusses her latest novel, the delights of the Frick and her ideal day in New York City.

Bestselling author Fiona Davis builds upon the secrets of the Frick Collection in a delightful blend of emotion and adventure.

Fiction

Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

by Lynn Hamilton

e’re used to reading about lonely women whose lives revolve around the quest for a man. Literary tradition has long dictated that lonely fictional men, on the other hand, be cynically heroic, adventurous, living large lives, and taking large risks because they have nothing to lose.

In Blue Ridge, T.

R. Pearson challenges that tradition with a vengeance, giving us two lonely men who wander, lost as six-week-old puppies, through the wastelands of their own lives. It’s not that Ray Tatum and his cousin Paul Tatum don’t hold jobs or occupy reasonably respectable homes. They do. It’s their private, unspectacular tragedies that make them interesting the way they’re haunted by past failure, the way they can’t get a break from women, and their total failure at heroism.

Paul is an actuary, a job not ordinarily freighted with heroic opportunity. He likes tidy corners and straight sofa cushions. He can’t even win the loyalty of the dog he adopted from the pound. Ray’s job as deputy sheriff is theoretically more stimulating, but Ray is doomed to sacrifice justice to small town politics. It’s tempting to say that Blue Ridge is a seedy, white man’s Waiting to Exhale minus the happy ending.

Shaking up this stagnant psychic terrain is Kit, a super competent, beautiful, African-American forest ranger who threatens to steal the whole show with her low tolerance for small town nonsense. Kit is the kind of lady who can break up with her boyfriend long distance and throttle a redneck racist at the same time pay phone in one hand, windpipe in the other. The wreck she’ll make of Ray’s heart is such a foregone conclusion it hurts. Stylistically, Blue Ridge is a tour de force. Playing on reader expectation, Pearson pens two completely separate story lines (two subplots, if you will) that are brought together only in the last three pages of the book. This means the novel’s brilliant cohesion is in debt not to the plot, but to the subtle ways the two men’s lives run parallel.

Lynn Hamilton writes from Tybee Island, Georgia.

e're used to reading about lonely women whose lives revolve around the quest for a man. Literary tradition has long dictated that lonely fictional men, on the other hand, be cynically heroic, adventurous, living large lives, and taking large risks because they have nothing to…

Fiction, Literary Fiction

Fiction Literary Fiction

Shadows of Pecan Hollow

Review by Jessica Wakeman

by Jessica Wakeman

Transformation is the hallmark of any well-drawn character, but in her heart-rending first novel, Shadows of Pecan Hollow, author Caroline Frost asks whether real transformation is attainable for everyone. Can a very bad man ever be redeemed? Can a lost girl find herself when she’s grown? Can people who are ridiculed or ignored by society learn to believe in their worth without relying on validation from others?

At 13, Kit has no reason to trust adults. She’s been shuffled around among a number of foster families, starved and even beaten. When an older man named Manny shows Kit simple yet unfamiliar kindness, she becomes his loyal companion. Though he gains her trust, he’s a con artist and a thief, and he’s only able to care for Kit through his ill-gotten gains.

Manny recruits Kit for small thefts and then gun-toting robberies, and over time they become notorious partners in crime, wanted by the police. Their life is not just itinerant but also dangerous, and when Kit becomes pregnant with their child, a shift in her perspective allows her to look at Manny and their violent delights with fresh eyes. Yet years later, when Manny is released from prison and comes for their daughter, Kit learns that the hard life isn’t so easy to leave behind.

Frost puts her background as a marriage and family therapist to good use in crafting Kit. Less perceptive writers may have written Kit as a cliché, but Frost guides the reader to understand Kit’s story and the reasons behind her susceptibility to a charismatic egotist. Shadows of Pecan Hollow will be heartbreaking for readers wiser and more experienced than young Kit, as they’ll be able to see Manny’s manipulation and violence for what it really is: abuse. Frost’s relationship expertise also shines in crafting the dynamic between adult Kit and her untameable daughter, Charlie.

At over 400 pages, Shadows of Pecan Hollow takes readers on a long journey—not unlike Kit’s journey to find a home. It will especially resonate with readers who have their own hard-won stories of survival.

In this perceptive debut, Caroline Frost guides readers to an understanding of her teenage protagonist's susceptibility to a charismatic egotist.

Fiction, Historical Fiction

Fiction Historical Fiction

The Christie Affair

Review by Arlene McKanic

by Arlene McKanic

The title of Nina de Gramont’s second novel for adults, The Christie Affair, has a double meaning. The first is Agatha Christie’s notorious disappearance in 1926, and the second is the affair her husband, Archie, is carrying on with Nan O’Dea (the real mistress’s name was Nancy Neele), the suspiciously omniscient narrator. But in the end, the story isn’t really about either of these affairs; it’s about motherhood.

A long list of authors has imagined what really went on when Christie left her husband and young daughter for 11 days in December 1926. In de Gramont’s telling, Christie’s leaving is prompted almost as much by her despair over her mother’s death as it is by her fury at her husband’s cheating. As for Nan, her life was blighted after being banished to a hellish Irish convent for “fallen” women when she became pregnant at 19. Nan’s baby daughter was taken from her, and her goal ever since has been to find her child, or get revenge, or both.

Tying Nan’s anguish with Christie’s disappearance is part of the book’s allure, but even a reader superficially familiar with the famous author’s biography can see that de Gramont’s novel is heavily fictionalized. Christie never discussed what she’d been up to those 11 days, not even with her own daughter, and this creates a lacuna for a novelist to fill up with some outlandish stuff. Indeed, at one point the story becomes a Christie-esque murder mystery: Who has poisoned that jolly newlywed couple in the hotel where Nan has chosen to hide out, and why?

Few of the characters are particularly likable in The Christie Affair, but all are fascinating. Archie is one of those entitled, upper-crust British military men who prides himself on not understanding the minds of women, children or even small dogs. Trauma has made Nan duplicitous. Christie, in her own way, is as arrogant as her husband. When she discovers that basically all of England is searching for her, she decides to extend her holiday a few more days and work on a new book. She figures her own 7-year-old daughter won’t mind, since she has a nanny.

Despite these liberties and embellishments, de Gramont doesn’t let her story stray too far from the basic facts, so the ending’s a bit of a letdown for Nan. Still, The Christie Affair is an enjoyable entrant to the canon of “Agatha Christie’s mysterious disappearance” novels.

Nina de Gramont’s The Christie Affair is an enjoyable entrant to the list of “Agatha Christie’s mysterious disappearance” novels.

Fiction

Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

by Linda Stankard

ust when you’re sitting waist deep in oyster shells and about to give up hope of finding that elusive gem, voila!, you open one more and there it is a pearl, long envisioned in your mind’s eye, yet breathtaking in its startling simplicity when you actually see it.

From the vivid imagination of Terry Kay, author of To Dance with the White Dog, comes a tale woven around a single element, much like a pearl forms around a grain of sand, and becomes something rare, lustrous, and painfully beautiful. Taking Lottie HomeM is woven around a sensual and mesmerizing young girl, Lottie Barton. Kay tells us in his author’s note that Lottie was a minor figure in one of his early, unpublished manuscripts, but upon rereading it at the beginning of 1999 he realized he had found his grain of sand in the character of Lottie. But while this enigmatic young woman is at the heart of the book, it is her effect on others that propels the narrative forward. The people, particularly the men who come to know her, are moved and changed to such a degree that they alter the course of their lives to encompass her into their respective worlds. There is Ben Phelps, a young, serious-minded baseball player when he first meets her in 1904 on a train heading out of Augusta, Georgia. There is Foster Lanier, an older, former ball player who is torn by his desperate need for Lottie and his vow to return her to her home. And there are others. Kay entrances us with a story that grows outward, like a widening circle that keeps us wondering where and how it will all end. Taking Lottie HomeM is a novel about the early years of baseball, about traveling carnivals and cabin farms in the hills, about crushed dreams and persevering hope, about small town gossip and small town goodness, about lust and longing, and most of all, about love in its varied forms.

If there was ever a doubt that Terry Kay had another novel in him to equal To Dance with the White Dog, Taking Lottie HomeM should dispel that doubt and renew his reputation as a writer in whose skillful hands the simple becomes the surprisingly sublime.

Linda Stankard writes from her home in Cookeville, Tennessee.

ust when you're sitting waist deep in oyster shells and about to give up hope of finding that elusive gem, voila!, you open one more and there it is a pearl, long envisioned in your mind's eye, yet breathtaking in its startling simplicity when you…

Comics, Graphic Novels & Comics

Graphic Novels & Comics Comics

Review

Review by bookpagedev

by Michael Sims

A fly-by-night kind of guy Frequently American heroes take the form of vigilantes outside the legal system. Batman certainly fits the mold. He is a loner, obsessed with vengeance and justice, and as popular culture has grown darker so has the world of the Batman. Few fictional villains of any kind rank near the Joker on a scale of heartless malevolence. Watson-Guptill has produced a striking collection of Batman artwork, Batman Masterpieces: Portraits of the Dark Knight and His World by Ruth Morrison. This is not a greatest hits anthology. The book comprises oversize reproductions of the paintings originally reproduced in a DC Comics/Fleer Master series set of collector cards gorgeous, melodramatic paintings beyond the scope of comic books. They present a fragmented narrative, the pieces of which had to be collected and assembled by card-buyers.

Batman Masterpieces features original sketches and extensive remarks by the artists on how they envisioned the many incarnations of an American cultural icon.

Fiction

Fiction

Through novels, discovering real life

Review by bookpagedev

by Carla Jean Whitley

No one in the tony town of Fox Glen reads for pleasure. Students dissect literature like a lab animal, as high school student Carley Wells says, and adults skim respected works in a literary version of keeping up with the Joneses.

But when Carley writes in an English assignment that she’s never met a book she liked, her parents decide to "fix" their daughter and display their own commitment to the arts by commissioning a book designed to her specifications–one she’s sure to love, not just like. The irony is great; Carley’s mom Gretchen is the type of person who buys books to decorate with, not to read.

Besides, Carley isn’t as ignorant as her parents and teachers believe. Although she misuses her SAT words and hates to read, Carley rewrites stories constantly. If an exchange with her best friend, Hunter Cay, doesn’t go as she’d like, she’ll re-imagine it later in a game she calls "Aftermemory." By contrast, Hunter is so deeply enchanted by words that his daydreams are populated by writer crushes. It’s Hunter’s love of reading and a desire to pull him out of his self-loathing, drunken state that eventually convince Carley to give the author her parents hire, failed novelist Bree McEnroy, a chance.

When Carley finally says what she means, without relying on Aftermemory to rewrite her script, she recognizes the appealing attributes of words. And when Carley points out that the characters, not the literary devices Bree uses to mask her insecurities, are the point of stories, Carley is essentially explaining this story. It’s not about books or reading, after all, but about people and relationships. Isn’t that what the best stories show us?

In her debut novel, author Tanya Egan Gibson crafts a tale filled with nuanced characters. Though it’s populated by teenagers, like the best literature, How to Buy a Love of Reading transcends age classifications to appeal to teens and adults alike.

Carla Jean Whitley writes and reads in Birmingham, Alabama.

Fiction, Literary Fiction

Fiction Literary Fiction

Nobody’s Magic

Review by Laura Sackton

by Laura Sackton

Poet Destiny O. Birdsong’s (Negotiations) debut novel is as much about what isn’t said—what can’t be said—as it is about what’s actually on the page. Nobody’s Magic is a masterfully crafted and sometimes painfully honest story told in triptych, centering on three Black women with albinism living in Shreveport, Louisiana.

This unusual novel is built on spaciousness and silence, with each section reading almost like a novella. Suzette lives with her wealthy parents, who shower her with gifts while keeping her sheltered from the world. After falling for a tenderhearted mechanic who works at her father’s shop, she begins to express her own desires for the first time. Maple is grieving the sudden death of her mother, a straight-talking, fun-loving and beloved sex worker. And Agnes has spent most of her adult life trying to set herself apart from her sister. When she meets a man while on a temporary job in Utah, a string of impulsive choices leads her to a confrontation with her family.

These are dynamic characters, each with her own distinct narrative voice and particular way of looking at the world. Suzette’s first-person narration is informal, conversational and intimate. Maple’s section is raw with grief. Agnes’ story, told in the third person, is slightly distant, as if she can’t quite bear to face herself. But each woman experiences a major shift: Suzette makes a momentous decision, Maple experiences a catastrophic loss, and Agnes faces her conflicted relationships with her mother and sister.

Each section is bound to the others through themes of Black womanhood, familial expectations, grief and the power of self-determination, but instead of drawing straightforward conclusions about these connections, Birdsong leaves the reader to meditate on the questions and ideas she raises. What do these very different experiences of Black womanhood have to say about one another? How does Suzette’s story inform our understanding of Maple’s? How does Maple’s relationship with her mother influence how we read Agnes’ section? Buried in these pages are infinite conversations—about what it means to be labeled “other,” to be a part of a community, to choose something for yourself.

Nobody’s Magic is worth reading simply to spend time with these women, but the thoughtful and unexpected way that Birdsong combines their three unique stories into one is what makes the book unforgettable.

Poet Destiny O. Birdsong’s unusual debut novel is built on spaciousness and silence, with each section reading almost like a novella.

Comics, Graphic Novels & Comics

Graphic Novels & Comics Comics

Review

Review by bookpagedev

by Ron Kaplan

Life in a box Journey to Cubeville (Andrews McMeel, $19.95, 0836271750), the misadventures of Dilbert, uber-computer geek, is an ode to workers the world over. Scott Adams’s humor may not be for everyone; if you’ve never had a problem boss or a hopelessly clueless co-worker then you might not get Dilbert. For the rest of us, life according to this cult cartoon is dead on. While Journey to Cubeville deals mostly with the quotidian frustration of dealing with pointy headed higher-ups and antagonistic underlings, work is not everything. Adams also covers such hot topics as dating, mutual funds, and the sports memorabilia business. As usual, our hero is aided by his associates Wally and Alice, as well as the animal sidekicks (who really run the show) the Machiavellian pair of Catbert and Dogbert. A note of caution: Don’t read Cubeville in public if you’re embarrassed about laughing out loud.

Life in a box Journey to Cubeville (Andrews McMeel, $19.95, 0836271750), the misadventures of Dilbert, uber-computer geek, is an ode to workers the world over. Scott Adams's humor may not be for everyone; if you've never had a problem boss or a hopelessly clueless co-worker…