nomadreader

narrated by Tavia Gilbert The backstory: Girl Through Glass  is on the 2016 First Novel Prize longlist. The basics: Told in alternating chapters, Girl Through Glass  is the story of a young girl's coming of age at the highest levels of New York City ballet in the late 1970's, and where she is now, a dance history professor somewhere in Ohio. While it appears to be a simple narrative at first, it soon becomes clear there are many mysteries between the 1970's and today for the reader to discover. My thoughts: Over the years I find myself less drawn to traditional coming of age stories, so I was excited to see this one offered two timelines, a narrative technique I enjoy. As is often the case with such a structure, I find myself trying to fit the pieces together as I read. The biggest challenge of dual narratives are what to revela when, and while I took issue with a few of Wilson's choices as I read, I admit I can't come up with a better way to tell this st...

Two years ago, The Dogs of Littlefield  was longlisted for the Baileys Prize . At the time, there was no U.S. publication in sight, despite the fact that Berne is an American author. I'm thrilled to report it's finally coming out in the U.S. Tuesday, so I'm reposting review in support of its American publication, with updated links to buy it. The backstory:  The Dogs of Littlefield  was longlisted for the 2014  Baileys Prize . Suzanne Berne won the  Orange Prize  in 1999 for her first novel,  A Crime in the Neighborhood   ( my review .) The basics:  Set in the idyllic (fictional) town of Littlefield, Massachusetts, famous for its place on the Ten Best Places to Live in America list, as well as its disproportionately high number of psychotherapists,  The Dogs of Littlefield  explores the characters of this town through their own eyes and through the eyes of Dr. Clarice Watkins, a cultural anthropologist spending a year in Litt...

The backstory: When I read the essay collection  Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York last year, Elisa Albert's essay was among my favorites. When I heard her new novel, After Birth , was a feminist, foul-mouthed novel about childbirth and early motherhood, I knew I had to read it. The basics: Ari, mom to 1-year-old Walker with her older, professorial husband, is still coming to terms with her traumatic c-section. She's unhappily living in fictional Utrecht, New York, a town near Albany, where Albert actually lives with her professorial husband and young son. My thoughts: Ari describes herself as "a little obsessed with [Mina Morris], by which I mean a lot, which I guess is what obsessed means." After reading After Birth,  I feel the same way about Ari. And perhaps about Albert herself. This books speaks  to me in both expected and surprising ways. I have a six-month old son, and as an intelligent, feminist, academic realist, I have some c...

narrated by Cassandra Campbell The backstory: Everything I Never Told You , Celeste Ng's first novel, is a 2014 New York Times  Notable Book . My thoughts: I had an e-galley of this book that I didn't get to this summer (when I was very, very pregnant.) When Amazon named it the best book of 2014, I knew I had to start it immediately. Thankfully, the week before, Ford had picked it for the next free audiobook in the Ford Audiobook Club (If you're on GoodReads and haven't joined this group--do. A free audiobook about once a month? So fun! The current pick, Tim Curry's narration of A Christmas Carol , is next in my audio queue.) I ended up listening to this one rather than reading it, and I'm so glad I did (although it's probably also lovely in print.) Beginning with the lines "Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet..." firmly entrenches the reader in the narrative of this family. As the title indicates, they have their share of thin...

The basics: Set over the course of one year and told entirely in letters of recommendation from Jason Fitger, a curmudgeonly professor of creative writing at Payne University, a second-tier Midwestern school, Dear Committee Members  is a satirical look at the current state of academia, particularly the humanities and English. My thoughts: I work in academia, and I have a fondness for novels set in academia. Julie Schumacher is a professor creative writing, and it's clear she knows academia well in this novel. I found Fitger's commentary hilarious, but as satirical as this novel is, it's firmly entrenched in reality: "The LOR [letter of recommendation] has become a rampant absurdity, usurping the place of the quick consultation and the two-minute phone call--not to mention the teaching and research that faculty were supposedly hired to perform. I haven't published a novel in six years; instead, I fill my departmental hours casting words of praise into the bureau...

Update: The Dogs of Littlefield  was published January 12, 2016 in the U.S.  I've reposted my review here . The backstory: The Dogs of Littlefield  is on the longlist for this year's Baileys Prize . Suzanne Berne won the Orange Prize in 1999 for her first novel, A Crime in the Neighborhood ( my review .) The basics: Set in the idyllic (fictional) town of Littlefield, Massachusetts, famous for its place on the Ten Best Places to Live in America list, as well as its disproportionately high number of psychotherapists, The Dogs of Littlefield  explores the characters of this town through their own eyes and through the eyes of Dr. Clarice Watkins, a cultural anthropologist spending a year in Littlefield as a visiting scholar. Soon after she arrives, dogs start getting poisoned, and the paranoia and repercussions of these events ripple throughout Littlefield. My thoughts: When the Baileys Prize longlist was first announced, the title I was most surprised to ...

The backstory: In the Last Analysis  is the first mystery in the Kate Fansler series written under the pseudonym Amanda cross. When Rose City Reader reviewed the second mystery in the series, The James Joyce Murder , I was intrigued enough to try this series. The basics: Kate Fansler is a literature professor at Columbia. When a student, Janet Harrison, of hers asks Kate for a recommendation for a psychoanalyst, Kate recommends her dear friend Emmanuel. When Janet is found dead on Emmanuel's couch,  he is the prime suspect. Kate never doubts his innocence, and she throws herself into the case when she believes the police aren't considering alternative suspects. My thoughts: I instantly enjoyed Kate as a character: "As is the unfortunate habit of the literary person, she already imagined herself retelling this extraordinary event." Although in the Last Analysis  is a mystery, the mystery is not always the focus of the novel. Kate still has to teach, research and a...

The backstory:   A Lesson in Secrets  is the eighth Maisie Dobbs mystery novel. Here are links to my reviews of the first seven books:  Maisie Dobbs ,  Birds of a Feather ,  Pardonable Lies ,  Messenger of Truth ,  An Incomplete Revenge ,   Among the Mad , and The Mapping of Love and Death . (There may be some minor spoilers from earlier novels in this review.) The basics: The British Secret Service recruits Maisie to work semi-undercover as a professor of philosophy at a small college in Cambridge. Maisie is qualified, but she must apply and actually get the job. Her goal: see if anything is amiss at this college, whose founder and president wrote a pacifist children's book during the war that was suppressed. When he soon ends up murdered, Maisie has trouble distinguishing between her duties as a mole and her driving need to solve the crime. My thoughts:  After The Mapping of Love and Death , which was my favorite of the Maisie Do...