In Seanan McGuire’s Every Heart a Doorway, kids are being reformed at Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children. Eleanor’s students have been to magical worlds, through doors opened only to them, and they’re having a…
Posts tagged novella
Never Mind
I know that a little extra excitement about a book really triggers my hyperbole button and it’s hard to dodge the exclamation points whizzing from my pores, but it’s happened again and I can’t shut…
Getting the Banana
If you’re looking to develop an appreciation for Banana Yoshimoto, fans will grab you by the shoulders and push you until you are nose-to-cover with her mini little novel-plus-one, Kitchen. And they’re right. This is…
Sense of an Ending
Picture yourself. Age, low 20s. Maybe you get a general idea that includes your favorite denim cutoffs and Martin Zellar covering Neil Diamond. Your hair styled like a teenage boy, a skateboarder, and you loved…
Crash and burn
Back when I was in my 20s, and before 9/11 made saying such things tacky, one of my friends used to refer to the systematic dismantling of ones life as “Crashing the plane.” When we…
Always a pleasure
Daniel Pecan Cambridge lives in a prison of disorder. His life in Santa Monica is a highly structured life in which he must find a way to the Rite Aid that doesn’t involve stepping off…
A parade of bad ideas
There is this pit that so many writers fall into when they have a character in crisis: They send the muddy-brained protagonist on a road trip. In the case of Joshua Mohr’s novella Termite Parade,…
Back to basics
I stopped reading. Well, I was still reading, but I was retaining little and caring even less about one of those National Book Award noms that I took for granted I would love because of…
The ties that bind
Mari is manning the front desk at the ramshackle sea-side hotel owned by her mother the night before the start of the busy season when a second-floor scuffle breaks out between a guest and a…
Smell ya later
It’s a tricky thing, reviewing a book that’s a recommendation from a friend (or in this case an I Will Dare reader). Well, I guess it’s only tricky when you didn’t enjoy the book. If…
Monotone musings from dipsters
Of all the vapid crap in all the vapid world over, this is the vapid-est. I have not been able to get that word out of my head — vapid! vapid! vapid! — since I…