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 …
Tag: Fiction
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/
Jun 02 2018
Silent House by Orhan Pamuk
Silent House, Orhan Pamuk’s second novel, tells some of the stories of three generations of an extended family. Pamuk rotates among five narrators, each of whom tells their part in the first person. Published in 1983, the book’s main action is set in 1980, just before another military coup shook Turkey. The house in question …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/02/silent-house-by-orhan-pamuk/
Apr 28 2018
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
What an incredibly annoying book. Imagine, if you will, a family where the parents ignore two of their children but place all their hopes and dreams and crushing projections on the one daughter who winds up dead soon after her sixteenth birthday, after which the parents learn to become better parents, and maybe better partners …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/04/28/everything-i-never-told-you-by-celeste-ng/
Jan 26 2018
An Excess Male by Maggie Shen King
4.5 stars It feels a bit mean to criticize such a thoughtful book, but I did have very long stretches of not understanding how Wei Guo could possibly be as awesome as he is given his surroundings and upbringing. Then I remind myself that he’s 44 years old and has spent that time learning how …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/01/26/an-excess-male-by-maggie-shen-king/
Dec 30 2017
Rich People Problems (Crazy Rich Asians #3) by Kevin Kwan
The third book in the series felt like the weakest, and tho Kevin Kwan tried to make a point about how the old guard are mostly a bunch of racist elitists who are insecure because they inherited everything instead of making their own fortunes, I really felt like that one scene was just a ham-handed …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/12/30/rich-people-problems-crazy-rich-asians-3-by-kevin-kwan/
Dec 26 2017
China Rich Girlfriend (Crazy Rich Asians, #2) by Kevin Kwan
I think the thing I found most infuriating about this book was how it was taken as a matter of course that everyone would be so incredibly disrespectful of their parents. I mean, I’m not terribly close to my own parents and have gone my quietly rebellious way from what they had in mind for …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/12/26/china-rich-girlfriend-crazy-rich-asians-2-by-kevin-kwan/
Nov 04 2017
Truly Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty
So this is not the book to start with if you’re new to Liane Moriarty. Ordinarily, she writes suspenseful novels of the secrets hidden behind the facade of the average (Australian) suburbanite, and usually she makes good use of interesting plot mechanisms to create dazzling puzzle boxes of novels. But Truly Madly Guilty’s mechanism is …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/11/04/truly-madly-guilty-by-liane-moriarty/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire