Each story is a slice of life where the reader enters places and into the mind of the characters. The characters are well developed, intriguing and mysterious, some live at the margin and others think at the margin. The plots are neat and compact with good time and pacing demonstrating the skills of the writer.
Category: Literary Fiction Reviews
Great giveaway!
We have a copy of Deadheading and Other Stories by by Beth Gilstrap to give away!
To win, sign up for our Free Newsletter on the right-hand side of the site and enter via the newsletter. Winner will be chosen by the end of October from subscribers who enter via the newsletter. Good luck!
Great new giveaway
We have a copy of Love, Only Better by Paulette Stout to give away!
To win, sign up for our Free Newsletter on the right-hand side of the site and enter via the newsletter. Winner will be chosen by the end of September from subscribers who enter via the newsletter. Good luck!
A review of Admit This to No One by Leslie Pietrzyk
An Appreciation of Zora Neale Hurston and Their Eyes Were Watching God
In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston, an appreciator of different kinds of language and literature, a modernist who remembered tradition, describes Janie Crawford’s stifling life and surprising growth with language that is, as needed, confiding, folksy, general, poetic, philosophical, or startlingly specific.
A review of Sparring Partners by Charles Rammelkamp
Sparring Partners is only as much about boxing as Moby-Dick is about whaling. Like any true work of art, it’s about life, its fleeting glory, its many sadnesses, its long decline, and finally its inevitable disappearance. In the end it’s about accepting that we all fall and break apart, and as such, it’s a terrific read, well worth your time.
A review of More Lies by Richard James Allen
There is always a degree of artifice in the process of creating a narrative. A story must be constructed, and the many and multiple perspectives of reality fixed into something linear and sensical, which is, in its way, antithetical to the reality of life. Allen plays with this notion, weaving together multiple narrative threads into a story that sets itself up as a noir thriller with an engaging tagline: a writer held hostage by a beautiful woman, forced to type on his typewriter as a decoy to an assassination.
A review of Mostly True Tales From Birchmont Village by Peter J. Stavros
Mostly True Tales from Birchmont Village is a gentle comedy reminiscent of Stephen Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town and Garrison Keillor’s novels. The humour derives from idiosyncratic characters who appear in the seven, chronological stories that make up the book.
New giveaway!
We have a copy of The Accidental Suffragist by Galia Gichon to give away!
To win, sign up for our Free Newsletter on the right hand side of the site and enter via the newsletter. Winner will be chosen by the end of August from subscribers who enter via the newsletter. Good luck!
A review of The Way of the Saints by Elizabeth Engelman
This is a stunning book, even if sometimes bleak, about a family struggling to transcend its own sometimes cryptic and often brutal history, as well as the history of their natural land. This is not a light and fluffy book, but its harshness and intensity are part of what makes it such a great read. And, as mentioned before, the writing itself is eloquent and gorgeous. The lyrical, precise prose in The Way of the Saints transforms the story into literature.