Fiction

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Betty Smith enchanted a generation of readers with ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’ − even as she groused that she hoped Williamsburg would be flattened Rachel Gordan, assistant professor of religion and Jewish studies at the University of Florida, discloses that Betty Smith herself had a different experience of life in Brooklyn than does the […]

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feature: Life Stories in Literature

Review: “Long Bright River” by Liz Moore

Set in the Kensington section of Philadelphia, Long Bright River humanizes the problems U.S. cities and their residents struggle with. Formerly a center of business and industry, Kensington is now home to abandoned and decaying former warehouses and factories, remnants of an earlier era when commerce and industry flourished.  As the novel opens, a police

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Historic photo: black and white image of a crowd of women suffragettes dressed in white marching on a city street lined by men in dark suits.

2 Novels to Read for Women’s History Month

In honor of International Women’s Day today, here are two novels that feature strong women. I reread the first 11 pages of this paperback to refresh my memory before writing this review. And immediately, I was right back as a passenger on the wild ride of this fictional world. The first clue to the nature

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A stack of 3 closed books (left); an open notebook with a pen on top (right). Title: 12 Novels Thata Changed How I Read Fiction

#5 “The Debt to Pleasure” by John Lanchester

Related Posts: #5 The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester © 1996 Date read: 7/12/1998 I don’t recall ever feeling the need to like fictional characters, yet this topic recurs periodically when readers condemn a book they’ve just finished because “I didn’t like any of the characters.” But if I ever did feel such a

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Last Week's Links

Literary Links

The Third Person: Writing in the Aftermath of a Home Robbery “Kate Sidley Wrote About Tidy Mysteries in a Faraway Country. Then Real Violence Came Into Her Home.” A couple of weeks ago, Literary Links included Fictionalizing Real Trauma as a Means of Healing. In this article, Kate Sidley, author of cozy mysteries set in

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A stack of 3 closed books, next to an open notebook on which rests a ballpoint pen. Text: Literary Links: Life Stories in Literature

Literary Links: Life Stories in Literature

When Consciousness Itself is the Protagonist: A Reading List I’ll let River Halen themselves describe the origin of this list of “books that bend reality and the self”: As I was writing my book Dream Rooms, a book about the years that led up to my coming out as trans, I found myself fascinated by

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A stack of 3 closed books (left); an open notebook with a pen on top (right). Title: 12 Novels Thata Changed How I Read Fiction

#4 “The Church of Dead Girls” by Stephen Dobyns

Related Posts: #4 The Church of Dead Girls by Stephen Dobyns © 1997 Date read: 9/23/1997 I used to think that the most important consideration in any work of fiction is, hands down, point of view. But this novel made me realize that context is just as important. A first-person narrator tells this story, about

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Last Week's Links

Literary Links

You May Be Surprised by What Scares You “Fear may be a linchpin of horror, but as a recent anthology attests, the true bedrock of the genre is mood.” Stephen Kearse writes, “even in my favorite works of the genre, horror scenarios generally intrigue rather than scare me; I’m more likely to ponder than to

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A stack of 3 closed books (left); an open notebook with a pen on top (right). Title: 12 Novels Thata Changed How I Read Fiction

#2 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce & #3 The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

Related Post: This week I offer two selections because there’s not much I can say about #3 without giving away the whole point. #2 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce © 1916 Date read: ca. 1966 or 1967 While I now credit Gillian Flynn’s novel Gone Girl with opening

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Collage of book covers: Tom Lake by Ann Patchett, The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov, The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin, Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

6 Degrees of Separation: From “Tom Lake” to “The Thirteenth Tale”

This month we start with the book we ended with in January. That was Tom Lake by Ann Patchett. The title refers to a region in Michigan where the protagonist and her family own a cherry orchard. first degree My first-degree entry is a no-brainer: Anton Checkhov’s probably best known play, The Cherry Orchard. second

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