Helen’s husband, Arthur Purcell, is managing one of his industrialist family’s manufacturing plants, which has been converted from a sewing machine factory to a munitions arsenal… Read More

Who exactly is the title character in this novel?  There are several candidates, all real historical figures and all men.  Eliza Touchet, however, is the central character here, a… Read More

The Berlin wall has just come down, and former East German intelligence officials are either destroying documents or trying to sell them to the CIA.  This novel opens with the death of… Read More

Nora is a literary agent who agrees to accompany her younger sister, Libby, to Sunshine Falls, NC, for a month in August.  The town is the setting for a best-selling novel that one of N… Read More

I loved Mandel’s Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel, but this novel was a disappointment for me.  I also generally love time travel novels, including Stephen King’s 11/22/63… Read More

This novel about a filthy rich family focuses on three very smart women.  Darley gave up her trust fund so that she could marry Malcolm without a pre-nup and gave up her career as well… Read More

A German bomb demolishes a London Woolworth’s in 1944, and five of the victims are children.  The substance of this novel is what might have been for these kids, but the premise i… Read More

Maali is a 1980s war photographer in Sri Lanka with a box of incriminating hidden photos that he wants to come to light.  Unfortunately, Maali is dead.  He is now a spirit residing… Read More

I have resisted reading this book, because it was basically the “It” book of 2022.  Where the Crawdads Sing was the last “It” book that I read, and it did not li… Read More

This book definitely provided a learning experience, especially with regard to the origins and beliefs of Rastafari.  I did not previously know that the Rasta revered Haile Selassie, th… Read More

Molly is a hotel maid who seems to be on the autism spectrum.  She misinterprets other people’s emotions and sarcastic comments, and consequently she is a poor judge of character… Read More

Frida Liu has a “very bad day” and leaves her eighteen-month-old daughter home alone for two and a half hours.  As a result, she must spend a year at the School for Good Mot… Read More

Vacca Vale is a fictitious Indiana city that was once a thriving industrial metropolis.  Now it is dying, and developers plan to demolish a sizeable greenspace.  The title of the b… Read More

Whether or not I like an author depends a lot on which of their books I read first.  In the case of Elizabeth McCracken, I loved The Giant’s House, but if I had read Niagara Falls… Read More

Lara and her husband Joe own a Michigan cherry orchard, and all three of their adult daughters are at home helping out during the Covid lockdown.  It’s the perfect time for Lara t… Read More

Lucy Grealy was an author and poet and a dear friend of Ann Patchett’s, ever since they were roommates at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop.  This homage to Lucy and to her friends… Read More

This book's political angle hits uncomfortably close to home.  The Crisis, a period of economic collapse, yielded way to a dystopian, fascist, xenophobic society with a Stepford tinge t… Read More

Utopia Avenue is the name of a very talented eclectic band assembled in England in the 1960s.  The backdrop of this musical era helps make this a nostalgia trip worth taking.  Grif… Read More

As ghost stories go, this one is not particularly gruesome or even scary, but it’s a good one nonetheless, and actually, it’s more of a haunted house story.  Every nine year… Read More

Jason Taylor is the smart, funny, and especially endearing first-person narrator of this gem, which takes place in a small English town in the 1980s.  Jason has a stammer, which is diff… Read More

Some authors have the talent to produce a novel, or at least a short novel, about a fairly unremarkable life.  Such is the case here.  Zorrie Underwood’s life begins with an… Read More

So many time travel novels are about someone falling in love with a time traveler.  Such is the case here as well.  Five people are transported from various times in the past to tw… Read More

Three siblings—Matthew, Zoe, and Duncan—happen upon a badly beaten and barely conscious boy in a field.  This discovery has a marked impact on each of them, as does the real… Read More

Mercury is the name of a very special horse—so special that Viv has sacrificed all of her ideals for this horse, which she does not even own.  Like Gone Girl, this novel contains… Read More

Whereas Normal People was about one on-again, off-again couple, two such couples inhabit this novel, which is largely epistolary.  Eileen and Simon, who live in Dublin, have known each… Read More

At first, the title character completely turned me off, with his five marriages and countless absurd failed business ventures.  I thought this book was going to turn out to be a farce… Read More

Tim Farnsworth, a partner in a New York law firm, suffers from bouts of the ultimate wanderlust.  When the urge to walk hits him, he can’t stop until he drops.  He eventually… Read More

Jews and Blacks live semi-harmoniously in this semi-voluminous cast of characters.  In fact, at times I had to remind myself who was Jewish and who was Black, and if I couldn’t re… Read More

This book needs a different title.  For one thing, it sounds like it’s about the family of Israel’s current Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and it is to some degree, but… Read More

I may not be the target audience, which is probably women in their thirties, for this juicy novel, but I devoured it with relish.  Nina, the first-person narrator, is a successful autho… Read More

Fourteen-year-old Benny Oh and his mother, Annabelle, both have a problem with inanimate objects.  Since the death of Kenji, Benny’s father, Benny hears the voices of things like… Read More

Two trans women, Reese and Amy, fell in love, but then Reese cheated with married men, and Amy has detransitioned back to a man, because being a trans woman was just too difficult.  Now… Read More

I struggled with this book and don’t understand why it has received so many accolades.  I had a long career as a software developer, so the technology aspect did not turn me off… Read More

This book might be perfect for readers with a short attention span, but the format turned me off.  The first half of the book is a series of social media witticisms, and, if that’… Read More

This book makes me wish I had studied Physics.  If you’re a science nerd, don’t miss this blend of fact and fiction, but even if you’re not a science nerd, this book i… Read More

The author here is on a mission to prove that Ted Bundy and other serial killers are not genius masterminds.  In this novel, the Ted Bundy character is known simply as The Defendant, an… Read More

Historical fiction is not really my thing, and since I know that Maggie O’Farrell has a very fertile imagination, I would prefer that she stay away from semi-true stories.  I like… Read More

I love time-travel novels with their tricky handling of interference with the past.  In this one, the author has conjured up a unique world--a series of identical valleys with a twenty… Read More

Tookie, a Native American woman living in Minneapolis, is arrested for stealing a corpse.  Plus, said corpse had crack cocaine hidden in his armpits.  After ten years in prison rea… Read More

Louise Erdrich’s older books, such as this one, read like folklore that has been passed down through the Ojibwe tribe for generations, rather than a novel that has sprouted from her im… Read More

Lipsha is a young Chippewa man who falls in love with his uncle’s girlfriend, Shawnee Ray.  She has a good head on her shoulders, and why she would put up with either of these men… Read More

After reading The Feast of Love, I thought I would love every Charles Baxter book, but sadly that was not the case.  Baxter’s prose itself is entertaining, but the storyline and c… Read More

My biggest problem with this book is that I did not totally understand what happened.  Nathaniel Mason is a grad student in Buffalo in the 1970s.  At a party he meets Jerome Coolbe… Read More

This is my first Charles Baxter novel, but it most certainly will not be my last.  In fact, I wish all novels could be as good as this one, as I completely fell in love with the writing… Read More

The title is a MacBeth reference, but here it’s a New Zealand environmental activist group that surreptitiously plants vegetables on unoccupied lands they don’t own.  Mira f… Read More

This is my least favorite Chang-rae Lee book.  As expected, the writing is stellar, but the plot is just too bizarre.  Tiller is a 20-year-old, living with thirty-something Val and… Read More

Sixty-year-old Jerry Battle works part-time at a travel agency, now that his son Jack is at the helm of the family landscaping company.  However, Jack’s “lofty” attemp… Read More

Henry Park is a Korean-American with an unusual job:  he is expected to cozy up to a particular person in order to get dirt on them.  After his assignment to a psychiatrist turns i… Read More

Daniel and Jonah are two key characters in this novel, but they are both dead from the beginning.  Daniel was a handsome, popular, athletic teenager who disappeared.  His body was… Read More

I did not like the format of this book, which is a series of interviews conducted by Sunny Shelton, the editor-in-chief of a music-oriented publication.  I sometimes lost track of who w… Read More

I was reluctant to read this novel, because, for me, Toibin’s biographical novel about Henry James, The Master, was a dud.  However, the German author Thomas Mann proves to be a m… Read More

Gustave von Aschenbach is an aging German writer who suddenly decides to vacation in Venice.  While there, he becomes obsessed with a beautiful Polish boy named Tadzio.  Aschenbach… Read More

We know from Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers that she can write vivid characters, but this book is more plot-driven.  It’s basically a murder mystery that takes place t… Read More

I had misgivings about this book, as there is so much bad historical fiction out there.  However, I found myself engrossed in this story and wondering how factual it was.  (The aut… Read More

A Colombian family of three—Elena, Mauro, and baby Karina—go to the U.S. to escape the violence in their home country.  Ironically, the constant stream of shootings in the U… Read More

Strange hybrids inhabit this novel.  Chapman is a faun—half man, half beast—who, along with his brother Nathaniel, marches westward during the early settlement of this count… Read More

William’s 3-year-old sister dies when William is 10 days old.  The behavior of his parents after this tragic loss causes William to feel that he should have been the child who die… Read More

Drinking molten gold?  That I’d never heard of until I read this book, which is a tale of alchemy, deception, and thievery, along with a will-they-or-won’t-they love story… Read More

At first, I thought this book was primarily aimed at parents.  However, I am not a parent, and now I wonder if perhaps that is a good perspective to have when reading this book.  E… Read More

I expect an emotional response to a good book, but this novel just made me angry.  This is the second book I’ve read lately in which a man hides a huge financial fiasco from his w… Read More

In the interest of full disclosure, I have not read David Copperfield, the book that inspired this one.  Here we have first-person narrator Damon Fields, aka Demon Copperhead, whose tee… Read More

Inspired by the life of a twelfth century poet, this novel about a reluctant nun never really gave me a reason to keep reading.  Deemed unmarriageable because of her unusual height, sev… Read More

I think the author had a lot more fun writing this book than I had reading it.  It’s either darkly comic or comically dark; in any case, it is cheekily macabre—sort of like… Read More

Ivan Doig died eight years ago and left a body of work about the West--more in the vein of Mark Twain than, say, Cormac McCarthy.  This has got to be the most wholesome, G-rated book I… Read More

Theo Ryan is a drama professor at a well-respected university in North Carolina.  He has written several plays but knows that only “Foolscap” has any merit.  His friend… Read More

The “Hell” part of this book’s title is certainly appropriate, and the subject matter is very timely.  Jason Mott makes crystal clear the life-and-death hazards of bei… Read More

I honestly have never pondered what it would be like if the dead returned to life, completely intact.  In this novel, that is what happens, and the “Returned” person may sho… Read More

Lai Zhen, an expertise on survival, finds herself under attack at a shopping mall.  She squeezes through ductwork as her assailant draws closer.  Then an unknown app called AUGR be… Read More

This book is a difficult read on several levels.  On the one hand, it waxes poetic in too lyrical and metaphorical a fashion and has too many internal soliloquies and musings.  All… Read More

Rachel, our first-person narrator, has trouble finding a happy medium.  She has an unhealthy fixation on calorie-counting, partly thanks to her body-shaming mother, but when she does th… Read More

A book this long—too long, really—is bound to be immersive. It chronicles the lives of multiple generations of multiple ethnicities, as depicted in the multi-page family tree sho… Read More

My favorite thing about this novel is the title.  For me, it refers to good deeds that could have been performed but were not—sins of omission.  Also, if one purpose of readi… Read More

Full of implausible coincidences and near misses, this novel still brings to life two strong Italian characters, Enza and Ciro.  Enza comes from a large family and meets Ciro when he is… Read More

When do we get to the good part?  This is the question I asked myself through the first two sections of this novel.  (There are four in total).  The first section is a novel a… Read More

The Hildebrandt family members are basically all at a crossroads, but the title also is the name of a Sunday night youth group at their church in a Chicago suburb.  Russ Hildebrandt, th… Read More

A more appropriate title for this book would be Broken Promises.  Wedding vows are broken.  A priest divulges the details of a woman’s confession to her husband.  A man… Read More

Novels about troubled marriages are a dime a dozen, but this one is better than most.  Malcolm is gorgeous and gregarious but is dishonest with Jess, his wife, about his plans for buyin… Read More

Superstar actress Katie Barstow, along with her husband, her brother and his pregnant wife, and five other Hollywood A-listers, celebrate Katie’s wedding with a Serengeti safari in 196… Read More

Chris Bohjalian rarely disappoints, and this novel is one of his most gripping.  I am amazed at how prolific he is and how each of his novels is totally different from the last.  I… Read More

As a history lesson about the Armenian genocide in the early 1900s, this novel is terrific.  The love story, on the other hand, and the discovery of family secrets generations later are… Read More

Stephen Drew is a disillusioned pastor in Vermont, where homicides are rare.  When one of his parishioners, Alice Hayward, and her husband die in an apparent murder-suicide, he decides… Read More

This novel has many similarities to A Separation, but I found it to be both less suspenseful and more satisfying.  Again, we have an unnamed narrator who is an interpreter (versus a boo… Read More

What do you do when your mother-in-law calls, asking about the whereabouts of your husband, when you’ve been separated from him for six months?  Our nameless first-person narrator… Read More

Two women, both running away from dangerous men, swap tickets and identities in an airport.  The implausibility of this occurrence becomes less so, thanks to a revelation late in the bo… Read More

An American oil company called Pexton has polluted the soil, air, and water of the fictional village of Kosawa.  Several Kosawa men, including Thula’s father, travel to the capita… Read More

I have lots of adjectives for this novel—gripping, chilling, creepy, disturbing, to name a few, in a Silence of the Lambs sort of way.  No, Ansel is not a cannibal, but he is a se… Read More

David Winkler’s dreams come true—literally.  However, sometimes they are nightmares, such as the one in which he fails to save his infant daughter from a flood.  Rather… Read More

Theo is an astrobiologist whose 9-year-old son Robin is prone to outbursts and may be on the autism spectrum.  Robin’s behavior has deteriorated since his mother died in a car acc… Read More

Victor Tuchman is dying, but none of his family members will miss this cruel and secretive man one bit.   In fact, their attitude is more one of good riddance.  Barbra, his ab… Read More

It’s ironic that a book about a fast horse proceeds at a slow trot rather than a gallop.  It does gather speed in the home stretch but not enough.  Part of my problem is that… Read More

Wallace is an overweight gay Black biochemistry grad student who feels like he is swimming upstream in an all-white world.  He describes himself as shy, but the dialog indicates otherwi… Read More

History does tend to repeat itself, especially where families are concerned.  Mick Riva abandons his wife and children, multiple times, after he becomes a superstar singer.  His gl… Read More

The title character of this bleak, semi-autobiographical novel is a gay boy growing up with an alcoholic mother in Glasgow, and to describe it as dreary and depressing is a huge understateme… Read More

It’s Thanksgiving in 1941 in Honolulu, and we readers know what’s coming.  Joe McGrady, a police detective investigating a double homicide, heads to Hong Kong to track down… Read More

Edie is a 23-year-old Black woman who is barely subsisting in every way and whose roach-infested apartment is about to be yanked out from under her.  So is her job, for that matter, and… Read More

Stephen King is a master of suspense, and this book exudes it, despite its overly familiar plot devices—a book within a book and a hired assassin planning to retire after one last lucr… Read More

After I finished his book, I was stunned to discover that the author is a woman.  Her focus is on four male characters who meet in college and become lifelong friends; the female charac… Read More

Larry Lavin was a smart and charming guy who came to be a massive cocaine dealer while attending the University of Pennsylvania.  After college he indulged in a hedonistic lifestyle, fu… Read More

The Oppenheimer triplets despise one another, for reasons that I never understood.  Their family is extremely wealthy, but true affection is in short supply.  In fact, Sally and Le… Read More

In a moment of pique, Giovanna's father says that Giovanna's face has become like that of his estranged sister, Vittoria.  Having never met the much maligned Vittoria, Giovanna becomes… Read More