Tag: Fiction

All That Really Matters by David Weill (EXCERPT)

After writing the memoir Exhale: Hope, Healing, and A Life in Transplant, revealing the emotional rollercoaster that is the life of a transplant surgeon, David Weill returns to the operating theater with his debut novel, All That Really Matters! ~~~~~~~ Joe Bosco is an arrogant, hard-charging transplant surgeon whose ambition knows no bounds. He pursues …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/06/11/all-that-really-matters-by-david-weill-excerpt/

The Band by Christine Ma-Kellams

Reading this book was a distinctly disorienting experience, in the best way possible. Was I reading the author’s diary? Did this thus make us best friends? Obviously the answer to both questions is no, but it still felt like a weirdly intimate experience, as if a good friend was telling me all about a recent …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/05/21/the-band-by-christine-ma-kellams/

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 is an absolutely furious short novel about sexism in South Korea, and while its incidents and statistics are specific to that country, it can stand in for how badly half of the world’s human population commonly treats the other half, often without even noticing. The book opens with what appears to …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/05/10/kim-jiyoung-born-1982-by-cho-nam-joo/

Der Tod eines Bienenzüchters by Lars Gustafsson

Der Tod eines Bienenzüchters by Lars Gustafsson

The title — The Death of a Beekeeper — lets readers know right away that this will not be an overly cheerful novel. It is a moving story, eventually a beautiful one in its slightly off-kilter way. Which is only fair because the beekeeper, one Lars Lennart Westin, often called “Wiesel,” is a slightly off-kilter …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/05/05/der-tod-eines-bienenzuchters-by-lars-gustafsson/

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/

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/

Black & White by Lewis Shiner

Black and White by Lewis Shiner

I went and checked, and Lewis Shiner never did reconcile with his father. Terrible fathers feature so prominently in several of his novels — Glimpses (1993), Outside the Gates of Eden (2019) and Black & White (2008); maybe also the other three that I’ve read, but it’s been so long that I do not remember for …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/05/29/black-white-by-lewis-shiner/