Sarah Canary is the first novel by Karen Joy Fowler author of The Jane Austin Book Club. A completely original novel by an utterly unique writer. From a Chinese labor camp in Washington state in the late 1800’s to an insane asylum, to a series of adventures down the coast to San Francisco, two unlikely characters travel together through one misadventure after another, although it’s unclear who is leading who. They travel through the wild west of frontier days, when…
Retablos, Stories from a Life Along the Border by Octavio Solis is a book of autobiographical short stories. Solis is a playwright living in Ashland, Or where I am about to see his play Quixote Nuevo for the fourth time as part of the 90th season of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. His writing is so honest and simple and direct, evoking memories of his childhood lived along the Texas/Mexico border. Sometimes I was longing for a more complete picture of…
Parasol Against the Axe is the latest book by Helen Oyeyemi, author of Boy, Snow, Bird. Oyeyemi is without a doubt a brilliant and original writer, a voice like no other. However, I liked this book even less than the last one. I keep wanting to love her novels, but I just don’t. This book is set in Prague, a sort of love story to the city. Within this book there is another book central to the story that each…
Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo is a novel set in the Dominican Republic and New York City. It reads like a love song to Dominican women and their special gifts. Flor, who has always been able to predict when someone was going to die, wants a living wake to celebrate her life and bring her family together. Each of the women in her family have unique gifts of their own and Acevedo brings them to life here. Although this is…
Dream Count is the long awaited new novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie who before reading this book I would have said was one of my favorite writers. This is actually a hard post for me to write. Her writing skill is on full display here, some passages so beautifully written they stop you in your tracks. However, this is by far my least favorite book I have read from her. The novel is broken into four sections, each highlighting one…
Radiant Fugitives by Nawaaz Ahmed is set in Obama era San Francisco during the last weeks of Seema’s pregnancy, narrated by her unborn son. Growing up in a Muslim Indian family in Chennai, her father disowned her when he found out she was a lesbian. Now many years later, living in San Francisco with her girlfriend, she is reunited with her mother who is dying of cancer and her sister who has become a very strict Muslim and doesn’t approve…
Orbital by Samantha Harvey is one of the most beautiful books I’ve read in a long time. It follows one day in the life of six astronauts and cosmonauts on the international space station. Harvey gives us small snapshots of their lives both in space and back on Earth. It is almost impossible to believe she has never been to space herself as she writes so eloquently about it. This book is what everyone needs to read right now. It…
There are Rivers in the Sky is the latest novel from Turkish author Elif Shafak, one of my favorite writers. This is a work of deeply researched historical fiction that brings to light the plight of the Yazidi people, and as such, it is at times terribly sad. Shafak weaves together several story lines, the most prominent that of Aurthur, growing up in extreme poverty in Victorian London, yet possessing such an incredible memory and intellect that he eventually rises…
The Oblivion Seekers by Isabelle Eberhardt translated by Paul Bowles (author of The Sheltering Sky) is a small collection of writings that fascinated me and sent me traveling around the world on my own many many years ago. I have just revisited this slim volume after my daughter asked me “Who was the woman you read about who dressed up like a man and traveled in North Africa over 100 years ago?” Re-reading Eberhardt’s work continues to inspire me. Much…
The Cemetery of Untold Stories is the newest novel by Julia Alvarez. There are some parallels here between Alma, the protagonist and Alvarez herself. A Dominican writer and teacher retires and sells her house in her small New England town and moves back to the DR after inheriting a piece of unwanted land left to her by her family. Her three sisters think she’s lost her mind when she decides to live there and build a cemetery for her unfinished…