Book Review
Hereafter
Two souls from different earthly eras make their way toward eternal life together in the sweet novel "Hereafter". A man learns to navigate the afterlife in Jackson Eaton’s inventive novel "Hereafter". Thirty-year-old Benjamin is a...
Book Review
You've Told Me Before
Well-to-do but emotionally adrift East Coasters grapple with unsatisfying marriages, generational divides, and family secrets in Jennifer Anne Moses’s short story collection You’ve Told Me Before. In one story, a seventy-year-old...
Book Review
Happy New Years
In Maya Arad’s epistolary novel "Happy New Years", an Israeli immigrant writes annual Rosh Hashanah letters to her friends back home, masking the reality of her life in the US. From 1966 to 2016, Leah writes to women from her...
Book Review
Desert Rites
The subsistence existences of those who contend with harsh environments and harsher government policies are the focus of the illuminating novel "Desert Rites". In Xuemo’s historical novel "Desert Rites", Chinese villagers struggle...
Book Review
The Fun Times Brigade
A Toronto woman tries to balance motherhood with being a musician in Lindsay Zier-Vogel’s heartfelt novel "The Fun Times Brigade". Amy’s newborn daughter, Alice, screams, won’t sleep, and won’t take a bottle. Amy’s husband,...
Book Review
The Bishop’s Villa
In a remote Italian town, an unassuming cobbler is drawn into helping partisans fight against fascists and Nazis in Sacha Naspini’s novel "The Bishop’s Villa". Despite missing several fingers, René is the cobbler of Le Case. He’s...
Book Review
Before the Mango Ripens
In Afabwaje Kurian’s novel "Before the Mango Ripens", Nigerians fight against white American missionaries for control over their country’s future. “Transition [is] afoot in Nigeria” in 1971, just after the nation’s...
Book Review
Afterlight
Set in the Netherlands, Jaap Robben’s novel "Afterlight" is about an elderly woman’s work to discover what happened to her child. In the book’s present, Frieda is in her eighties. After her husband, Louis, dies, she is deemed too...