Category: Fiction

Eine blaßblaue Frauenschrift by Franz Werfel

Eine blaßblaue Frauenschrift by Franz Werfel

At the beginning of Eine blaßblaue Frauenschrift (In a Woman’s Pale Blue Hand), life is going very well for Leonidas Tachezy as he celebrates his fiftieth birthday. Thanks to a lucky break in his student days, his natural abilities and discipline have led him to a high station in Austrian society in 1936. He is …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/02/25/eine-blasblaue-frauenschrift-by-franz-werfel/

Here In Avalon by Tara Isabella Burton

A large part of me is glad that Tara Isabella Burton was not writing novels back when I was a teenager, because I would have made her books my entire life aesthetic. Her three novels to date — Social Creature, The World Cannot Give, and now Here In Avalon — revolve around women who are …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/01/23/here-in-avalon-by-tara-isabella-burton/

Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote

Holly Golightly knew how to make an impression. That’s the first impression that Truman Capote wants his readers to come away with. Years after Capote’s unnamed first-person narrator last saw Holly, he drops everything to go see a bar owner who called him out of the blue after not being in contact for quite a …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/12/20/breakfast-at-tiffanys-by-truman-capote/

Sacrifices For Kingdoms by Patricia D’Arcy Laughlin (EXCERPT)

Read an excerpt from Sacrifices For Kingdoms, a debut contemporary romance/women’s fiction novel featuring Elizabeth, a sophisticated activist and philanthropist from Trinidad, and Michael, a socially conscious European prince, who are irresistibly drawn to one another. As their love deepens, they must navigate dangerous secrets, political intrigue, and the struggle to reconcile their opposing loyalties. …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/10/24/sacrifices-for-kingdoms-by-patricia-darcy-laughlin-excerpt/

Let The Dead Bury The Dead by Allison Epstein (EXCERPT)

Hi, readers! As we head into the weekend, let me gift you with an excerpt from Allison Epstein’s latest novel, Let The Dead Bury The Dead. The war is over – it’s 1812 and Russian forces have defeated Napoleon. Sasha, a self-made captain of the Imperial Army, is finally coming home to his lover, the …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/10/20/let-the-dead-bury-the-dead-by-allison-epstein-excerpt/

The Wife App by Carolyn Mackler

I’m not sure how it happened, but way too many Millennial women in the United States have been raised to be people-pleasers in a manner that horrifies my late Gen X/geriatric Millennial sensibilities. Somehow, they’ve been persuaded by “Lean In” and “yes and” culture (with a healthy dose of late-stage capitalism) to think that having …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/07/13/the-wife-app-by-carolyn-mackler/

Come Away From Her by Samuel W. Gailey

Cover art lately has been impressive all across the industry but y’all, look at this gorgeous thing. It’s even prettier than the Kiki Smith etching that inspired the book, in my opinion anyway. And in my opinion? Come Away From Her reads like Marilynne Robinson deciding to turn her hand at commercial fiction a la …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/01/26/come-away-from-her-by-samuel-w-gailey/

Softcore by Tirdad Zolghadr

Softcore by Tordad Zolghadr

In Softcore a first-person narrator, annoyingly also named Tirday Zolghadr, relates the weeks and days before the opening of a new and arty nightclub in contemporary Tehran, interspersed with his remembrances of earlier times in and around Iran’s capital city. The book has some funny bits, such as a running gag about the splittist tendencies …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/05/27/softcore-by-tirdad-zolghadr/

Die Leiden des jungen Werthers by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Die Leiden des jungen Werthers by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Finally reading The Sorrows of Young Werther closes a gap in my education as a German major, a mere thirty years or so after I earned my degree. Because my institution only had two professors of German, an upper-level course in Goethe was only offered periodically. And the one time it was offered when I …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/05/15/die-leiden-des-jungen-werthers-by-johann-wolfgang-von-goethe/

Das Haus an der Moskwa by Yuri Trifonov

Das Haus an der Moskwa by Yuri Trifonov

Das Haus an der Moskwa, known in English as The House on the Embankment and with the original title Дом на набережной, poses a question that it doesn’t really answer, or at least not directly. On a hot August day in 1972 Vadim Glebow has traveled out to a distant corner of Moscow to get …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/05/13/das-haus-an-der-moskwa-by-yuri-trifonov/