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 …
Tag: Fiction
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/
Oct 27 2017
Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
This was pretty terrific. Kambili is the daughter of Eugene, a Great Man: he’s a pillar of the community, and not just of the towns they shuttle between in a migration familiar to anyone who’s ever grown up middle class or better in a third-world country. He’s a big deal in Nigeria, a wealthy, self-made …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/10/27/purple-hibiscus-by-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie/
May 28 2017
Amberlough by Lara Elena Donnelly
As far as fantasy novels go, this has a great setting and characters (with one exception that I’ll get to in a minute) and above all atmosphere. Essentially an alternate world take on Weimar Berlin before the fascists’ rise to power, it depicts life lived on a razor’s age, hedonism in the maw of societal …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/05/28/amberlough-by-lara-elena-donnelly/
May 15 2017
Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye
Reader, I devoured this book on my road trip to visit my in-laws over Mother’s Day weekend. It is, as the author admits, something of a ridiculous novel: a contemporary of Jane Eyre’s contemplates the similarities between their lives even as she herself, the titular Jane Steele, solves problems by means of murder, and finds …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/05/15/jane-steele-by-lyndsay-faye/
Jan 02 2017
Eligible: A Modern Retelling of Pride and Prejudice (The Austen Project #4) by Curtis Sittenfeld
Quite charming, and for the most part a note-perfect retelling of the classic for modern times. There were really only two false notes for me: the first was the laughable idea that, as a writer-at-large, Lizzy Bennett earns $105k a year, and the second was the last marriage proposal of the book, which I thought …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/01/02/eligible-a-modern-retelling-of-pride-and-prejudice-the-austen-project-4-by-curtis-sittenfeld/
Dec 05 2016
Fables: The Deluxe Edition, Book Two by Bill Willingham et. al.
The only problem with reading comics in their original single-issue format is that, if you’re like me and disorganized and somewhat absent-minded (and thus, the kind of person who finds Goodreads a godsend for its ability to help me keep track of what I’ve read and what I haven’t,) a lot of times, you don’t …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/12/05/fables-the-deluxe-edition-book-two-by-bill-willingham-et-al/
Dec 03 2016
Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood
This was 324 pages, really? It breezed by so quickly, an under-rated quality in serious fiction, and I was so, so happy to not cringe my way through another of Margaret Atwood’s recent works. Of course, she’s not completely off the hook, but her modern-day adaptation of The Tempest, a novel about a man whose …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/12/03/hag-seed-by-margaret-atwood/
Sep 20 2016
When All the World Was Young by Ferrol Sams
When All the World Was Young wraps up Ferrol Sams’ semi-autobiographical bildungsroman trilogy that began in Run With the Horsemen and continued in The Whisper of the River. It follows Porter Osborne, Jr., from his entrance into the medical school at Emory University six months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor through his service …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/09/20/when-all-the-world-was-young-by-ferrol-sams/
Sep 18 2016
The Return Of Sir Percival: Guinevere’s Prayer by S. Alexander O’Keefe
I’m not sure how I feel about this book. On the one hand, it’s an entertaining tale of Dark Ages Britain, with some really cool Roman/Byzantine/Middle Eastern history and politics thrown in. On the other, it’s a re-imagining of Arthurian lore which plays super fast and loose with established canon, and while it’s good reading, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/09/18/the-return-of-sir-percival-guineveres-prayer-by-s-alexander-okeefe/