Monthly Archives: November 2024

This is the most pandemic-focused pandemic novel I’ve read so far. In other books (like Dayswork, The Sentence, Summer) the pandemic was part of the story, but it was more like background: in Lucy by the Sea, it’s front and center. Strout’s novel is about a writer who is semi-recently widowed, and whose first (ex)-husband,ContinueContinue reading “Lucy by the Sea, Elizabeth Strout”

Small Beauty is exactly the right name for this book, but not in the usual connotations of either word. The smallness is not one of minimalism, or miniature, but rather, in the sense of something private and precious. And the beauty is not the kind you admire in awe, or consider at arm’s length, butContinueContinue reading “Small Beauty, Jia Qing Wilson-Yang”

Wow, this book. It’s devastating but also tantalizing — it keeps you slightly off balance the entire time, in a state of suspense and tension but also morbid, terrified curiosity. It’s a cruel book, in that you know that bad things are coming (the blurbs on the back tell you, if you didn’t) but meanwhileContinueContinue reading “Minor Detail, Adania Shibli, tr. Elisabeth Jaquette”

Elisa Shua Dusapin’s novels are a marvel to be, because they’re suspenseful and engrossing, but nothing really happens, and nothing gets resolved. Rather, as the story progresses, you burrow a little deeper into the characters; the situation thickens. But this unfolding is more like a folding — it adds dimensions, but conceals as much asContinueContinue reading “Vladivostok Circus, Elisa Shua Dusapin, tr. Aneesa Abbas Higgins”

I listened to this on audiobook, which is either the best or the worst way to do this particular book, depending. I had thought that maybe I wasn’t doing a very good job listening, because it seemed to swerve suddenly from one character to another and shift unexpectedly in time and place, and I wasn’tContinueContinue reading “Bitter Orange Tree, Jokha Alharthi, tr. Marilyn Booth”

I don’t read mysteries all that often, but I do relish listening to Tana French’s novels. No idea if they’d work as well on the page (they probably would), but as audiobooks they’re fantastically immersive — thrilling, creepy, suspenseful. This one was slightly less so than the Dublin Murder Squad books, I think because theContinueContinue reading “The Searcher, Tana French”

This isn’t particularly amazing as a work of fiction — it’s clever, but also rather simplistic — but it is pretty fascinating as an historical document. It was published in 1938, and clearly registers an awareness of how dire and violent things were in Germany already, and it was an instant best-seller in the US,ContinueContinue reading “Address Unknown, Kathrine Kressman Taylor”

I wouldn’t be surprised if someone adapted this into a tv miniseries, because it feels about that size and shape. There’s so much going on — multiple character arcs that elegantly run together, jumping back and forth in time. Lots of wonderful, heartfelt queer romance, in what felt like very emotionally mature relationships, which wasContinueContinue reading “On a Sunbeam, Tillie Walden”