New York City – An American Bluestocking

The mystery of the one-book detective

Dol Bonner got to star in only one of Rex Stout’s mysteries, which is a shame.

The ambiguities of race resonate in ‘Passing’

I wanted to read a classic of African-American literature during February and the solution was found when the New York Times Style Magazine’s T Book Club chose Passing (1929) by Nella Larsen as its monthly selection. The slim novel — really more of a novella — is set in the 1920s and explores the practicalContinue reading “The ambiguities of race resonate in ‘Passing’”

Classic ‘Mother Night’ resonates all these years later

Vonnegut could not have known how his homegrown Nazi theme would play out in the 21st century We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. Howard W. Campbell Jr., the narrator of Vonnegut’s brilliant 1966 novel Mother Night, is pretending to be a Nazi —Continue reading “Classic ‘Mother Night’ resonates all these years later”

Read it before you see it

Long before it was a movie, ‘The Goldfinch’ cast a spell on its readers With the recent release of a major motion picture based on Donna Tartt’s runaway bestseller, I thought it would be worthwhile to revisit my initial review of the book. This review was originally written in 2014. Wow, what a sprawling, magnificent,Continue reading “Read it before you see it”

The Irish Book of Job

John Boyne puts his hero through some heavy trials in ‘The Heart’s Invisible Furies’ So many friends on LibraryThing have recommended John Boyne’s The Heart’s Invisible Furies (Hogarth, 2017) to me, and one went so far as to send me a copy of the trade paperback (thanks, Amber!) It took me entirely too long toContinue reading “The Irish Book of Job”