Dog On It
DOG ON IT Please don’t wait for the dog days of summer to read Spencer Quinn’s Dog On It. Based on our present pandemic restrictions, summer as we know it may be a long way off. On numerous occasions, I have no trouble passing on a book when its title is too darned cute, and […]
The Sisters of Versailles
The Sisters of Versailles – Sally Christie’s fictional telling of the Mailly-Nesle sisters who became part of the life of eighteenth-century France’s King Louis XV. When Louis XV ruled eighteenth-century France, he did so with rampant political and military worries and with widespread personal scandal. The latter is the focus of Sally Christie’s novel, The […]
Hungry Heart, A memoir of consuming beauty
HUNGRY HEART, ADVENTURES IN LIFE, LOVE AND WRITING Subtitled “Adventures in Life, Love, and Writing,” Jennifer Weiner’s new book of essays, Hungry Heart, pinpoints the reasons for her immense popularity as a writer. One plus is her engaging personality, someone (I think) any woman would value as a best friend. Another plus is her unblinking […]
Badluck Way
Badluck Way: A Year on the Ragged Edge of the West Many authors, especially those engaged in contemporary nonfiction nature writing, have dealt with the ragged interface between the Old West and the New. Some are naïve or nostalgic, prosaic or polemical. Few are as thoughtful as Bryce Andrews in Badluck Way: A Year on […]
Once Upon a River
ONCE UPON A RIVER When I turned the final page of Diane Setterfield’s novel, Once Upon a River, I closed the book and sat staring at the middle distance, conjuring images of her river, the Thames, in my imagination. Setterfield’s river had come to be a living breathing entity, carrying her characters and her readers […]