We have a timely treat for you today, readers, with an excerpt from Jacqueline Friedland’s Counting Backwards. Told in two alternating narratives bound together by a shocking parallel of issues — including reproductive rights and society’s expectations of women and mothers — this novel is a compelling reminder that progress is rarely a straight line …
Category: Fiction
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/07/29/counting-backwards-by-jacqueline-friedland-excerpt/
Jul 22 2025
When People Leave by Leslie Rasmussen (EXCERPT)
We have another terrific excerpt for you today, dear readers, with an absorbing, dual viewpoint look at one of the most traumatic experiences of a person’s life, and the mysterious circumstances that precipitated it. Leslie Rasmussen’s When People Leave is subtitled A Story Of Love, Lies And Finding The Truth. It follows the three Weiss …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/07/22/when-people-leave-by-leslie-rasmussen-excerpt/
May 18 2025
A Perfect Day to Be Alone by Nanae Aoyama
I purchased A Perfect Day to Be Alone on the strength of Doreen’s review. The book is, as Doreen described, short, quiet, absorbing, surprising and, in the end, memorable. A young Japanese woman named Chizu is the first-person narrator, and she tells her story over a bit more than a year as she manages her …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/05/18/a-perfect-day-to-be-alone-by-nanae-aoyama-2/
Apr 16 2025
Hyo the Hellmaker by Mina Ikemoto Ghosh
Hyo the Hellmaker, by Mina Ikemoto Ghosh came out this week, from Scholastic! It’s got intricate world building, noir vibes, and atmospheric illustrations by the author for any manga-loving teen of your acquaintance. Hyo is a “hellmaker,” which means she is able to make bespoke curses for your enemies. Once you commission her, she can …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/04/16/hyo-the-hellmaker-by-mina-ikemoto-ghosh/
Mar 17 2025
Groomed by Jody Paschal
The global COVID-19 lockdowns were a tough time for millions around the globe, in no small part due to the confrontation many people had with whether or not they actually enjoyed living with themselves. One such person is Mylo Gunn, a fifty year-old Black American whose extra time for introspection butts up against the burgeoning …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/03/17/groomed-by-jody-paschal/
Feb 09 2025
Eine Jugend by Patrick Modiano
This slim novel — titled Une jeunesse in the French original and Young Once in English — opens as a thirty-fifth birthday celebration for Odile is winding down. She and her husband Louis have run a children’s home in a village at the foot of the Alps for a dozen years, but now that their own …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/02/09/eine-jugend-by-patrick-modiano/
Feb 07 2025
A Year of Diana Wynne Jones: The late 1980s!
In my quest to read all of Diana Wynne Jones’s books in one year, this month I read Howl’s Moving Castle, A Tale of Time City, The Lives of Christopher Chant and Wild Robert! It was fun to revisit Howl after the Ghibli film version became so popular, and Wild Robert was entirely new to …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/02/07/a-year-of-diana-wynne-jones-the-late-1980s/
Dec 22 2024
Landschaften nach der Schlacht by Juan Goytisolo
What was good about Landschaften nach der Schlacht (Landscapes After the Battle)? Well, it’s short. It’s also written in short sections, which I tend to appreciate when I’m reading in German. Looking through the table of contents, I don’t think that I see any sections longer than five pages; most of them are two or …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/12/22/landschaften-nach-der-schlacht-by-juan-goytisolo/
Dec 14 2024
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
For most of my time reading Mrs Dalloway, I wrestled with the eight deadly words: I don’t care what happens to those people. The novel begins with a relatively famous opening line, “Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” It tells stories of numerous people on one day in midsummer London of 1923, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/12/14/mrs-dalloway-by-virginia-woolf/
Aug 03 2024
Die Welt hinter Dukla by Andrzej Stasiuk
Without the Süddeutsche Zeitung’s set of 50 more great novels of the 20th century, it might have been a very long time before I heard of Andrzej Stasiuk, let alone read any of his books. Stasiuk was born in Warsaw in 1960, but he makes his home in a small town in Poland’s furthest southern …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/08/03/die-welt-hinter-dukla-by-andrzej-stasiuk/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire