I started reading Helen Oyeyemi’s White is for Witching, but lost interest. The writing seems overwrought in a juvenile way. I wanted to like this, and I wanted to teach it,…
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Rebecca
July 11, 2019I can’t believe I’ve never read this novel before. I’m sure I’m about to offend someone but I’ll just say it: Rebecca is such a Jane Eyre knock-off. And I’m such…
Beyond the Bright Sea
June 10, 2019A friend brought this for my daughter (8), but the book is too “mature” for her, in both plot and style. It’s a pretty good story, a coming-of-age tale about…
The Castle of Otranto
June 2, 2019This book is bonkers. I live-tweeted my reading experience. I wonder if I can copy that link here? Let’s try it: “Otranto is Bonkers” by @KdholzerMy
A Murder is Announced
May 29, 2019The first Miss Marple mystery I’ve ever read and I liked it a lot. I just finished writing a book review of Andrew Hobbs’ A Fleet Street in Every Town: The…
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
May 17, 2019Captain Raymond Holt narrates this book. Wait, no that’s not quite right. It’s, rather, a Scottish woman who is channeling her mother’s hyper-grammatically-correct-judgmental voice. Don’t let the Reese Witherspoon endorsement…
Magpie Murders
December 29, 2018About fifteen pages into this book, I started thinking about one of my favorite TV shows, Midsomer Murders. The book starts out exactly that way, introducing a network of characters, all…
Winter Garden
December 27, 2018God save me from women writers who hate their female leads. There must be some term for this–oh wait, Adrienne Rich calls it male-identification. In her essay on “Compulsory Heterosexuality,”…
The Christmas Box
December 13, 2018Sentimental crap. Don’t bother.
Choir Boy
November 18, 2018Reviews of the play call it a coming-of-age story, but it’s too brief a blip in time to really be a bildungsroman. The play is fast-paced, covering maybe a year…