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An Unfinished Season: A Novel by Ward Just
Ward Just’s novel about the loss of innocence is the type of novel that can sneak up on a reader with its unassuming style and emotional power. Told in the steady voice of narrator Wils Ravan, An...
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The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo
Edward Tulane is a china rabbit… The bulk of my reviews deal with serious fiction and not with children’s literature. Therefore, you may ask yourself, “What does a china rabbit have to do with literary...
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Cocoa Almond Darling by Jeffra Hays
Jeffra Hays’ Cocoa Almond Darling (Smashwords 2011, 126 pages) is the story of Millicent Randolph, survivor of a bad marriage and starting over in tough circumstances. These include finding a place to...
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Sunflower by Cass McMain
Sunflower (Holland House Books, 452 pages) moves slowly forward, accumulating in its plain language the details of Michael’s uneventful life as a metal worker and sculptor. He and his live-in...
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The Contractor by Charles Holdefer
As the twenty-fist century accelerates toward a new low point in modern political history, eighty-five people possess about forty percent of the world’s wealth (that’s not a typo),* second- and...
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The Land Across by Gene Wolfe
Lately I don’t read much science fiction, though it was once a passion. I received this book as a gift, though, and found the cover information intriguing. “Wolfe is our Melville,” proclaims Ursula Le...
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The Sea Trials of an Unfortunate Sailor by Kurt Brindley
Before I begin this review, let me first recommend to anyone whom it persuades to read The Sea Trials of an Unfortunate Sailor (Amazon,198 pages), that after doing so they further benefit themselves by...
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Friendswood by Rene Steinke
Rene Steinke’s latest novel Friendswood (Riverhead Books, 350) will have its paperback release on May 26th. Steinke, a National Book Award finalist for Holy Skirts, offers the beautiful story of a...
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Wanderer Springs by Robert Flynn
Up in that part of state just east of the Cap Rock, south of the Red River and west and north of Wichita Falls is a region of the country the residents continue to call “East Texas,” although, even at...
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The Betrayers by David Bezmozgis
The Betrayers (Little, Brown & Co, 267 pages) begins with a Russian expression on a young woman’s face. A pretty blonde woman working as hotel clerk in Yalta is berated by a young woman from...
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New of the World by Paulette Jiles
I will avoid the absurdity of defending a National Book Award finalist; we can agree that the western can be literature. We have Larry McMurtry and Charles Portis to underline the point. The clean...
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The Tale of the Bastard Feverfew: One Man’s Journey into the Land of the Dead...
I like a book that’s unafraid of big themes, and this one has a beauty: mortality itself, the reality waiting behind our illusions of security. It’s a mythic idea, Orpheus’ descent into the underworld,...
View ArticleThe Heritage of Smoke by Josip Novakovich
In The Heritage of Smoke (Dzanc, 240 pages), a collection of short stories set mainly in 20th century war-wrecked Croatia or Ex-Yugoslavia, Josip Novakovich makes American-born writers, whose plots...
View ArticleAlice and the Time Machine by Victor Fet
Victor Fet, a colleague with whom I have shared adventures in art and science, offers Alice and the Time Machine (Evertype, 134 pages, illustrated by Byron W. Sewell) on the 150 anniversary of the...
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