Oh gosh, how to properly review this book without spoilers? It doesn’t help that the library copy I borrowed told me exactly what myth the entire narrative was hung from before I’d even turned on my Kindle. Let me just go over the synopsis before delving into my (likely unpopular) opinions. Gretel is a 32 …
Category: Fiction
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/04/07/everything-under-by-daisy-johnson/
Mar 23 2019
You Are One of Them by Elliott Holt
This is another novel whose story I could have easily wandered in and out of, with just a minor tweak or two. Sarah Zuckerman, the protagonist of You Are One of Them, works for an English-language newspaper in Moscow in the mid-1990s. My newspapers were in Budapest, and I didn’t relocate to Moscow for another …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/03/23/you-are-one-of-them-by-elliott-holt/
Mar 03 2019
Elmet by Fiona Mozley
My first reaction upon finishing this book was to e-mail the friend who’d sent it to me and ask if she was okay, primarily because this is the latest in a string of sexual assault revenge fantasies she’s been recommending to me. Fortunately, she is alright and the theme has been entirely coincidental, but Elmet …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/03/03/elmet-by-fiona-mozley/
Feb 11 2019
The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick
Y’all, that was delightful. Ngl, I totally pictured Bradley Cooper and JLaw in the roles (and had to suffer the cognitive dissonance of her being way too young to play Tiffany) but that aside, I was incredibly moved by this surprisingly gentle tale of lost love, mental illness and sports fandom. Pat Peoples is not …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/02/11/the-silver-linings-playbook-by-matthew-quick/
Dec 17 2018
The Favorite Sister by Jessica Knoll
I don’t think it’s possible to review The Favorite Sister without bringing up Jessica Knoll’s searing debut Luckiest Girl Alive. That book centered a female protagonist who was done being “nice”, to the consternation of a large number of readers. To the rest of us, TifAni FaNelli was a source of cathartic glee. TFS expands …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/12/17/the-favorite-sister-by-jessica-knoll/
Dec 07 2018
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
Not every fantasy features swords and sorcery, though most of them involve a mythical creature of one sort or another. Amor Towles names his in the title: A Gentleman in Moscow. In midsummer 1922, following a brief trial, Count Alexander Rostov is not ordered immediately shot as a class enemy. It seems that senior Bolsheviks …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/12/07/a-gentleman-in-moscow-by-amor-towles/
Oct 17 2018
Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll
This book first came to my attention when work was doing coverage of the Edgars the year it was nominated for Best First Novel, but I deliberately chose another book on the slate because the blurb was equal parts attractive and repulsive to me. It sounded very much like rich white people problems, plus every …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/10/17/luckiest-girl-alive-by-jessica-knoll/
Oct 15 2018
The City & The City by China Miéville
Don’t read the second sentence of this post. Don’t read the sentence that comes before this one. In this world, we do not acknowledge italics. Italics are the only text there is. If you see something written in another way, avert your eyes, unsee and unread before it is too late. We have some leniency …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/10/15/the-city-the-city-by-china-mieville/
Sep 11 2018
There There by Tommy Orange
Tommy Orange is such a superlative writer that he can do things that irritate the hell out of me in other books and somehow make them work. And better than work: he creates magic on the page. It’s not really a spoiler to say that There There ends with multiple storylines left unresolved. In the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/09/11/there-there-by-tommy-orange/
Sep 02 2018
The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer
Okay, jeez, this book means well but honestly, it’s like someone took a distillation of current events from the last ten or fifteen years and fictionalized it to make it easily understandable for and palatable to the average white woman. Here is modern feminism (with a bit of background on the movement in America) and, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/09/02/the-female-persuasion-by-meg-wolitzer/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire