Steampunk and fantastical elements are in evidence (chronometers, automata, dirigibles, et al.) but don’t intrude unduly. And there are wondrous, moving passages full of lyricism, elegy, wonder and suggestive speculation. Cherish them as you puzzle out Rupetta’s world and its underlying culture and history. This is a strangely enchanting, wholly convincing novel.
Tag: fiction
A review of The Old American by Ernest Hebert
Caucus-Meteor comes across as a deeply human and interesting person who will win your respect and compassion. His tribe made Nathan and two other captives run the gauntlet. An old acquaintance and rival of Caucus-Meteor, Bleached Bones, a gambling man, places bets on Nathan bring deliberately harmed. Caucus-Meteor accepts the bet. Working behind the scenes, Caucus-Meteor tries to make the gauntlet easier for Nathan. He succeeds, and Nathan’s bravery as he ran the gauntlet wins the Indian’s admiration. They adopt him.
A review of Vengeance is Now by Scott D. Roberts
As a reviewer, books show up in my letterbox and I know I must read them soon to turn them around in a reasonable time frame. Occasionally it’s a chore. Vengeance is Now arrived in my letter box on a Friday. I picked it up after work. On Saturday morning I opened it, intending to read the first chapter to see what I’d be in for. By Sunday morning I’d finished reading the whole book. It’s one of ‘those’ – those rare books that you can’t put down until you get all the way to the end.
A review of Hold Still by Cherry Smyth
It would be a shame if readers overlook this vivid, sensuous novel because of the plain cover and cryptic title. Written in the third person, it reveals the heart and mind of a girl in her late teens who blossoms in the art world. Irish-born, London-based Cherry Smyth, the author, is uniquely qualified to write such a novel, being an art critic, curator, poet and creative writing professor.
A review of In Falling Snow by Mary-Rose MacColl
In Falling Snow is a great book with a little bit of everything—history, family drama, romance, lighter moments with Iris and Violet, and even a little bit of mystery. MacColl notes that the telling of the story itself and capturing the spirit of Royaumont and the women who ran in was more important than scrutinizing every historical fact and figure, and I feel she pulled this off very well.
A review of Motherline by Lisa Rosen
Motherline is a bit like a coming-of-age story—Maggie is facing first-time motherhood, saying goodbye to merely being a daughter and granddaughter and now having to face responsibility for another human being, thus continuing the “motherline” of generations of women that had gone before her, while Katharine is still grieving the son that she lost but trying to move forward into her new role as grandmother (and eventual family matriarch) in her own way.
Imagination, Wit, and Madness: The Wapshot Scandal, a novel by John Cheever
John Cheever is a wonderful writer, and his novel The Wapshot Scandal contains observed life and imagined adventure, bringing together ancient rituals and bourgeois affections and habits, private desires and deceptions and public reputations, romance called to reconcile a reality that resists, supernatural suspicions that subvert reason, and mournful, surprisingly poetic interrogations, as Cheever examines family and communal life. The novel does not contain stories that offer easy comfort, though their intimate cruelty and sensual pleasure and melancholy do entertain.
A Review of The Silent Wife By A.S.A. Harrison
The Silent Wife is not a long book—a little over 200 pages—but Harrison manages to fit a gripping tale into those few pages. The story is told almost entirely in present tense, so it gives the reader an almost unsettling feeling of voyeurism—we’re absolutely watching these characters self-destruct in real time. There is some backstory offered as a way to explain how Todd and Jodi were shaped by their families (clearly dysfunctional in Todd’s case; less obvious in Jodi’s).
A review of Torn Apart: The Abduction of Gillian Curtis by Marta Sprout
The author doesn’t quite deliver the complex character development that could have been achieved with the scintillating story line, however, what she does deliver is a heartwarming, fun tale about the people who come into our lives when we least expect it and how they can embed themselves in our hearts.
A review of Blood Secret by Jaye Ford
From start to finish, the writing remains taut and powerful. Ford rarely slows the pace with overt description, but the scene setting is done brilliantly through the eyes of the characters, combined with action.