Remember when we talked about this book? Author David Lynch filled us in on all the fortunes and misfortunes of today’s Irish. Lynch showed us what you might see on the Irish street, or in the Irish bureaucrat’s office. Getting in to the Irish head and heart is a job for another author and, fortunately, Lynch tells us which one to look for: Roddy Doyle. [...]
If you’re a little bummed that your summer months of sandals and cold lemonade have abandoned you and you now have to bundle up against the wind, Rich and Pretty by Rumaan Alam may soothe your wounded soul a bit. You will meet Sarah, an Upper East Side girl, and Lauren, her best friend since grade school. The novel’s name comes from an overheard [...]
When I opened up Louise Dean’s The Old Romantic, I met a cast of miserable people being miserable to each other. There’s Nick Goodyew, who has spent his adulthood getting away from the kind of dad who talks like this: “[I]f you start to finkin about what other people are going through. . .” Or this: “[M]iserable excuse for a youman bein’.” Nick changes [...]
Take one normal Mormon housewife, busy keeping up with the laundry and the Relief Society president’s meal requests. Throw in a husband who’s a bishop, which means she’s now got people showing up on her doorstep with tear-stained faces, people calling at all hours. That should be enough to kickstart Mette Ivie Harrison’s novel, The Bishop’s Wife. Then people go missing. Or dead people [...]
Kate Atkinson’s hefty story, Life After Life, can make a reader dizzy, even while sitting in a solid, comfy chair. It follows the life of Ursula Todd, a British banker’s daughter, born on a snowy night back in the days when people sang songs like “By the Light of the Silvery Moon.” The trick about this “life” of Ursula’s is that she dies and [...]
Continuing with Mormon authors this week, I present The Rules in Rome by A.L. Sowards. The story begins when a pack of Allied soldiers ambush a German officer’s car bounding along the road in Italy. As the men examine the dead officer now slumped in the seat, they notice how thoroughly he resembles one of their own, Bastien Ley. Daringly, Bastien assumes the dead [...]
This week and next, in observance of Summer Book Trek, Read Fast Eat Slow features books by indie Mormon authors. You can head on over to SBT’s website to check out what’s new in that niche. Fantasy and romance (but I repeat myself) are the favorite genres of these authors, both of which I handle like the mushy vegetables that need to come out of [...]
“We weren’t the only ones.” “No kidding. . . . Why do you think we had to start our own hotels?” One day, a Mrs. Marx of Newton Massachusetts dashes off a letter to a Vermont inn, inquiring about vacation accommodations. The reply letter makes it clear that “Our guests who feel most comfortable here . . . are Gentiles. Very truly yours . [...]
Welcome to Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Paris and . . . Cleveland, the settings for J. Courtney Sullivan’s novel, The Engagements, in which all the strands of the story dance around the Maypole of the diamond engagement ring. Leaping back and forth through the decades, we have four mini-stories: James, a paramedic, chases down blood and drunkenness in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a suburb he could [...]
Schuller Kindermann hears party noises outside his camp cabin late at night. Schuller is a gentleman of some means. He owns Kindermann Forest, a summer camp in the Ozarks. He’s spent the last week training the his counselors before the campers arrive in two days. Going out to investigate the noises, he finds his counselors frolicking in the pool. Naked. He fires them. And [...]
