I needed this to be good and not only did it come through, it came through with big brass bells on! Honestly, it had me from the scene where Ali was staring at the courtesans and his companion steps between them and admonishes him to look away because OH MY GOD, S. A. Chakraborty understands …
Tag: Religion
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/01/08/the-city-of-brass-the-daevabad-trilogy-1-by-s-a-chakraborty/
Nov 13 2017
Kill 6 Billion Demons, Book 1 by Tom Parkinson-Morgan
My husband got me this last Christmas and I’ve just now gotten round to reading it and, er, what? The best thing about it was Allison deciding she needed to suck it up and go save her idiot boyfriend, even if he’s kind of a crap boyfriend, because she’s a badass and that’s what badasses …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/11/13/kill-6-billion-demons-book-1-by-tom-parkinson-morgan/
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/
Jul 26 2017
Saints And Misfits by S. K. Ali
I’m still struggling with my reactions to this story. Representation abso-fucking-lutely matters, so it’s really great to have an American hijabi Muslim teenager and her diverse cast of family and friends (and foes) take center stage here. But I kept wondering how much my desire to have these stories told reconciled with how impatient I’d …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/07/26/saints-and-misfits-by-s-k-ali/
May 21 2017
The Accidental Terrorist by William Shunn
How does a Mormon missionary wind up facing charges of terrorism and conspiracy? In Canada, of all places? William Shunn’s memoir, The Accidental Terrorist, starts with him at nineteen answering questions for a detective. It’s hard to tell if he’s more disconcerted by the charges he faces or the woman facing him in a short, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/05/21/the-accidental-terrorist-by-william-shunn/
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/
Feb 22 2017
An Acceptable Time by Madeleine L’Engle
An Acceptable Time strikes me as unusually autumnal for a young adult novel. Meg, the heroine of A Wrinkle in Time, has moved off-stage in this, the fifth novel of the Time quintet. Her daughter Polly shares the spotlight with her parents (Polly’s grandparents), Alex and Kate Murray, doctors of physics and chemistry, respectively. The …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/02/22/an-acceptable-time-by-madeleine-lengle/
May 05 2016
The Thirty Years War by C.V. Wedgwood
As their dates of publication recede into the past, books of history increasingly become artifacts of what they chronicle. They illuminate two periods: the one about which they are written, and the one in which they are written. With academic or more specialist works, this process is faster and more conscious; monographs are written in …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/05/05/the-thirty-years-war-by-c-v-wedgwood/
Dec 15 2015
The Nuns of Sant’Ambrogio: The True Story of a Convent in Scandal by Hubert Wolf
I’ll admit, I picked up the book because “ooh, sexy nuns!” But The Nuns Of Sant’Ambrogio turned out to be so much more: an intelligent examination of the Catholic Church in a turbulent period of the 19th century, with this scandal serving to illuminate the theological and political divides that have shaped the institution (and …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/12/15/the-nuns-of-santambrogio-the-true-story-of-a-convent-in-scandal-by-hubert-wolf/
Aug 23 2015
Lila by Marilynne Robinson
It is so very difficult for me to review Marilynne Robinson’s works, because I always feel like my own prose is inadequate to describing hers. I cried a lot reading Lila, because I understand what it feels like to fall in love with someone even when you don’t trust love or people or existence, when …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/08/23/lila-by-marilynne-robinson/
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