Ambitious novel set in two different time periods–1980s Chicago during the AIDS crisis and 2015 in Paris–with characters, timelines and plots that converged, but sometimes in confusing ways. The novel…
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So You Want to Talk About Race
July 6, 2020Like many well-meaning and awkward white people who want to be better allies in anti-racism, several of my colleagues and I have formed a reading group to do some self-educating.…
The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club
May 26, 2020This did not disappoint. Although I was surprised at the similarities between this plot and its resolution and that of Sayers’s first novel Whose Body? I suspect that once you’ve…
Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot
May 19, 2020Absolutely eye-opening indictment of the ways that mainstream white feminism has failed women of color, their children, and larger communities. Anyone who considers themself a feminist should read this.
Strong Poison
May 13, 2020The most surprising thing happens on page 47 of this edition: Lord Peter proposes marriage to Harriet Vane who’s in prison for poisoning her former lover. This is just after…
The Turn of the Key
April 20, 2020In the vein of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train, this new novel by Ruth Ware seeks to revise and update Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw…
Shrill
April 4, 2020Sometimes Lindy West is very funny, most of the time she’s a brilliant writer and thinker. Sometimes, like all memoirists, she’s a bit navel-gazey. I think she’s a super brave…
Normal People
February 8, 2020I affirm that Sally Rooney is a very clever writer, attuned to nuance of language and social behavior. How else would I be so compelled to read a novel about…
A Rule Against Murder
January 24, 2020I love mysteries, but many of the readers in my church book club apparently do not, as they were largely dismayed to have to read this one. Thus I spared…
Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus
August 1, 2019Absolutely fantastic story about a middle-school-aged girl born with no arms getting through life. It’s a first-person narrator with a wry tone and wonderful sense of humor. She’s adopted, and…