Mrs. Fletcher’s Rude Awakening

Tom Perrotta has a talent for creating very relatable, very human characters and setting them in novels that feel timely and contemporary. With the exception of The Leftovers, which had a fantasy element, reading his…

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Sing, Unburied, Sing

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward is a haunting tale of the Jim Crow south and its reverberations, generations deep. In rural Mississippi, thirteen-year-old Jojo lives with his aging grandparents who he refers to as…

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Yesterday

You have to suspend a lot of belief to really love Yesterday by Felicia Yap, a sci-fi mystery where people either remember one day or two. In Yesterday, the world is divided into Monos and…

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Ballad of the Sad Middle-Aged Man

There are times when there’s a comfort to cliched material. It’s pleasantly familiar, devoid of the unexpected – like a favorite meal or well-worn sweatshirt, it holds only satisfaction, not surprise. One Last Thing Before…

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Feeling Wisconsin

Recently, a friend pointed out on Twitter that a book he was reading would drive me bonkers because it touched upon very many of my literary pet peeves. “Dick Lit to the extreme. Selfish, sad-sack,…

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