Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi is a surprisingly sweet little novel that sneaks up on you and hooks you before you know it. In a small underground cafe in a back alley of Tokyo there is a special seat you can sit on that allows you to travel back in time, you just need to return before the coffee gets cold. If you are able to suspend your disbelief and go along for the ride, the eclectic…
The House of Fortune by Jesse Burton is the sequel to The Miniaturist. However, the first novel came out so long ago, I probably should have reread it first as I felt a little lost diving into this book. Set in 1705 Amsterdam, Thea is turning 18 and a marriage to a wealthy man is her family’s only hope to pull them out of their declining circumstances. Her aunt Nella is orchestrating the marriage, but Thea has very different ideas…
The Music of Bees by Eileen Garvin is a novel set in rural Oregon that brings three unlikely characters into a surprising and life changing friendship. Alice, a beekeeper stuck in a dead end job, encounters Jake, a teen in a wheelchair sporting a mohawk. After inviting him to her home, she finds that he has a rare gift with the bees. Enter Harry, a twenty something needing a job, but with so much social anxiety he has never been…
The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray is historical fictional about J.P. Morgan’s personal librarian Belle da Costa Greene, a black woman born Belle Marion Greener, passing as white, who became one of the most influential women in the world. Hired to curate his collection of rare books, manuscripts and artwork, Belle proved herself invaluable to J.P.Morgan both in New York and Europe. She rose to incredible fame during her lifetime, all the while hiding her true…
Our Missing Hearts is the new novel by Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere. Set in the near future, after years of violence and economic hardship, an authoritarian government has taken over the US and laws are put into place to protect “American culture” at all costs. Although at first this seems hard to imagine, Ng’s writing parallels so many events that are currently happening in our country it begins to feel like an all too real possibility. Bird,…
Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield is a strange and lyrical novel about a marriage in the most unusual circumstances. Leah, a marine biologist goes on a routine expedition in a submarine meant to last only a few weeks, but doesn’t return for six months, and when she finally returns, she is changed. Miri, her wife, is trying to figure out what exactly is wrong with her and how to help her. The book becomes more and more…
The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams is a wonderful novel based on the writing of the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary and the real women who worked on it but went largely un-credited. Set in Oxford at the Scriptorium, Esme grows up amidst words and definitions, as defined by men, while she sees the words pertaining to women and the poorer classes often discarded. As she gets older, she starts actively collecting these words from women…
Sweet Bean Paste is a lovely novel by Durian Sukagawa. Sentaro works in a confectionary shop making and selling dorayaki, a pancake filled with sweet bean paste. He only works here to repay a debt to the owner, as his past criminal record keeps him from other jobs and his dream of becoming a writer. One day, an older woman with disfigured hands walks into his shop and his life changes. Tokue makes the best sweet bean paste he has…
The Tobacco Wives by Adele Myers is historical fiction set in North Carolina in the late 1940s. Maddie Sykes, the 16 year old protagonist and budding seamstress, stays with her aunt in Bright Leaf every Summer. It is a town built on the tobacco industry; everyone smokes and celebrates with lavish balls all that tobacco has brought to their town. A coming of age story set in post WWII America, Myers examines the early days of the women’s movement, and…
O Beautiful by Jung Yun is a novel set in a small town in North Dakota where fracking has taken over the town. Elinor, a forty something Asian model, now a freelance writer, grew up in the area and is on assignment to write a piece about how the town has changed for a large magazine. What starts out as one story quickly turns into a much more complicated story as Elinor digs deeper into the racial politics of what…