Fiction

I don’t know if it’s fair for me to write a review of The Mothers by Brit Bennett. When I started the book, my dog was either lying next to me on the grass when I read outside; or at my feet when I read inside. When I finished it, she was gone. I still read the book, but my brain was only making a glancing connection with the material.

But here’s what I can say:

The Mothers is about Nadia [corrected thanks to a reader], a 17 year old whose mother just died by suicide. The Mothers of the title are olden women who are members of a Black church, and they act as an omnipotent Greek chorus narrating the novel. Her father is the guy with a truck who helps everyone out. From the jump, we know that Aubrey had an abortion, and that news of it eventually gets out.

When and how is part of the plot, so I won’t spoil it here. I’ve seen other contemporary writers try to use a Greek chorus before, and Bennett is the best one to do it yet.

However, the last third of the story unraveled, with the primary players making decisions that […]

Hey folks, I’m going to take some time off from writing the blog, for a very sad reason. Annie Oakley Tater Tot, the action adventure wonder dog, died on Tuesday. She was only nine years old. It was very fast and sudden. I had six years with her, and it’ll never feel like enough.

I’ve shared more here. In addition to being the perfect travel companion, she was also my reading buddy, usually snuggled up right to me while I did so. I already miss her so much.

I was interviewing someone for a story yesterday and we got onto a tangent about books we loved, and books we didn’t. We both agreed that perhaps we have reached an age where certain books are Not For Us because we are Old. I felt that way about Sally Rooney’s Normal People. And I also felt that way, though to a lesser extent, about Emma Cline’s The Guest.

It’s a novel about Alex, a sex worker who has joined her much older boyfriend at his beach house in Long Island. Even though he isn’t paying here, there is clearly an exchange. She can live with him without holding down a job, and he buys her jewelry, bags and clothes. They’re not what she would purchase for herself, but they represent what he wants her to be, as appropriate arm candy for dinners and parties he takes her to around the island.

After doing something he didn’t like at one such party, he tells her to go back to New York. She pretends to, but doesn’t. The rest of the book is what she does while waiting until his big Labor Day party, where she assumes he’ll welcome her back with […]

After two somewhat heavy reads, I wanted to dip into something easier, and it couldn’t get any lighter than The Bridgertons: Happily Ever After by Julia Quinn.

Each romance novel in the Bridgerton series comes with an epilogue, where we get a jump forward in time to see how our love birds are doing in their happily ever after. This book is a collection of “2nd epilogues,” where Quinn either fills in a gap in a couple’s story, or gives another update on their lives.

Most of these novellas have been published already, and I know I’ve read a few, but still: it’s fine. It was nice to sink into a nice, fluffy book for a little while, especially since I found this copy for free. I don’t know if I’d pay for it, but I’m not mad I picked it up and did a quick update on some of my favorite characters from the Bridgerton literary universe.

I know I’ve said this on the blog before, but not every book we read needs to be a piece of Serious Literature. I appreciate those books, and even review them sometimes! But book candy is good too. Reading can be fun — I […]

Hello from [checks map] Illinois! Let’s take a step back to the western portion of the country (and my trip) with this review of Open Season by C.J. Box.

As I wrote in my review of his book Endangered, I am new to his work, and liked that book enough to go back to the beginning. Here we find Joe Pickett as a newly minted game warden in Wyoming. He’s had a run in with a poacher who stole his service weapon, which was embarrassing, but didn’t seem like a career ending event. Then the guy shows ups bleeding (and eventually dead) in Pickett’s backyard.

He was holding an empty cooler, with what appear to be claw marks inside. What could have made those? The mystery of this murder, and those claw marks, intertwine pretty quickly.

And the book was….once again, here we go: aggressively fine! I’m not going to spoil what the creature was, and why it lead to someone being killed, but I learned a lot about the reason why. This book is also close to the plot of the first season of the Joe Pickett TV show, so if you have that on your to-watch list, you may […]

Hello from [checks map] Utah! I am taking the long way home after driving from New Jersey to California and spending a week in Disneyland with my family. I started making the return trek on Sunday. I’ve seen a lot — but it’s tiring!

I did manage to read We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian. If you’ve been hanging around the blog since I revived it in 2022, you should be familiar with Sebastian. She’s written The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes, and The Queer Principles of Kit Webb, which are set in 1750s England.

In We Could Be So Good, she’s stepped out of that realm and into New York City in 1958. Our two heroes are Nick, a reporter; and Andy, son of the publisher who is learning the ropes in the hope that he’ll take over that paper someday. We know from the jump that Nick is gay, though he’s not out, as it would have been a criminal and personal liability. Andy is bisexual, though it takes him some time to admit it, and even then it’s after he’s been in a serious relationship with a mutual female friend.

I wanted to write a […]

I DID squeeze in one more book before I left. Huzzah! And what a book it is: The Celebrants by Steven Rowley.

You might remember him from 2021’s The Guncle, which I loved (as a lot of other people did — it was a bestseller). That book was a lot about one man’s grief over the recent death of his best friend/sister-in-law and longer ago death of his partner. This one is about grief, too, but it’s spread around.

The Celebrants is about six friends who met in college. One of the group’s members died three weeks before graduation. In a drunken fit of grief, they make a pact: each one can call the group together, whenever they need to, so they can attend their own “funeral,” and hear people say nice things about them while they’re still alive.

The lead person in the book is Jordan, who we learn fairly early on is dying of cancer. He calls for his own pre-funeral, and the story of the group comes out, with jumps back and forth in time, from there.

While Rowley is a gay man, I have related more to The Guncle and The Celebrants more than some fiction written by […]