Miss Benson’s Beetle by Rachel Joyce
London, 1950: Miss Margery Benson, age 46, has decided to ditch her dull teaching job and follow her youthful dream …
Category Archives: Contemporary fiction
Mirror, Shoulder, Signal by Dorthe Nors
translated from the Danish by Misha Hoekstra A challenging book. I’m not sure that I really understood it—or if understanding …
Look Both Ways by Jason Reynolds
I’ve always thought that one phase of life I’d not willingly re-visit is junior high—today’s middle school. Plunging into Jason …
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
I felt an immediate connection to Transcendent Kingdom when I read the epigraph, taken from one of my favorite poems, …
Young Adults
The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante A Castle in the Clouds by Kerstin Gier Thanks to the algorithms …
The Boy in the Field by Margot Livesey
Were teenagers in 1999 more composed, kind, contemplative, and devoted to family? That is, before computers, phones, and social media …
Sisters by Daisy Johnson
I read Sisters in the span of a few hours. I’m not sure that was the best way to have …
Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout
The best book I’ve read in 2019 (so far, anyway). Strout’s stories are about individuals who are old, sick, damaged, …
Arcadia by Iain Pears
I loved Arcadia; it’s my favorite book of 2016 (so far, anyway). It encompasses time travel, history/alt-history, romance, clever literary …
Fallen Fret by Ray Richard
I’m as guilty as the next reader of drifting into ruts, defaulting too often to the same genres, settings, and …
Reading Salon 