Githa Hariharan’s 2003 novel offers a glimpse of what it’s like to teach at the university level without the guarantee of academic freedom. The protagonist is a History professor whose…
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Ghachar Ghochar
November 6, 2017According to Suketu Mehta’s blurb on the front of the novel, “Vivek Shanbhag is an Indian Chekhov.” This is pretty accurate. Ghachar Ghochar is short, subtle, and totally compelling. The ending…
All the Missing Girls
October 27, 2017Another pick from the neighborhood book club. Like Gone Girl but with the innovation of narrating the story backwards. So you get the protagonist, an unsympathetically drawn woman from a small…
The Yacoubian Building
October 9, 2017I’m mentoring a senior capstone project on this novel, so I figured I’d better read it. For me, it started too slowly. Plot did not “thicken” until around page 80,…
The Giver
September 21, 2017Rather depressing story about what we might give up if we wanted a perfect world of “Sameness”: colors, music, real feelings, holidays, family bonds. Don’t get attached to the kid…
Emma
August 31, 20172017 is the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen’s death. I’m not sure why that is something to celebrate, but whatever. Austen fans are a peculiar breed. I am not one,…
The Whole Town’s Talking
August 23, 2017This has to be the whitest book I’ve ever read. Flagg’s newest (?) novel chronicles the evolution of Elmwood Springs, MO, from it’s origins as a Swedish immigrant farming settlement…
Princeless
August 10, 2017Last year, I sent a good friend a copy of Bitch Planet vol. 1 because I wanted to share the awesome. This year she returned the favor by sending me the first volume…
Bad Mother
August 3, 2017With this memoir-y collection of essays, published in 2009, Waldman beat Roxane Gay to the titular idea of ideological/institutional failure by five years. And Bad Mother and Bad Feminist do…
Special Topics in Calamity Physics
August 1, 2017At first I was enchanted with this novel, but then I decided it’s bloated. Pessl is definitely a talented writer, and the novel eventually finds a plot, but it took…