“within these pages, there are passages that approach the sublime. There is pain, anguish, horror, and sadness, alongside passages of subtle human feelings conveyed without words.
“Graham Swift has a remarkable ability to slip back and forth in time, while identifying the many small incidents and markers that shape and reshape the lives of his characters.”
1986. Fulgencio Ramirez, a pharmacist in a border town called La Frontera, reads the obit section every morning, waiting for a man to die so he can move in and scoop up his wife.
“The Boy in the Field is a literary mystery novel. . . . Just not the kind that focuses on what happens on a patch of land, a highway, or even a country.
“Accept that you might have conventional horizons. Stop asking for life to be a poem. Why is it so difficult to speak plainly without allusions to books, films, and art?”
“Like with the best plot-driven novels, you need to know what happens at the end. Like with the best character-driven novels, you bleed with them along the way.”
“although McNally’s stories seem unbelievable at first, they throb with a recognizable human heartbeat, powered by love and regret and the mystery of life.”
“We learn of a father’s love, a mother’s brokenness, disparity between brothers and sisters, yet, in the ugliest or most beautiful of exchanges, true kinship and bonds are discovered.”
“As a feat of reclamation for the Camelot-like heyday of Black Detroit, Black Bottom Saints, like the legendary impresario at its center, makes plentiful Motown magic.
“A steady undercurrent of tension runs through The Frightened Ones as Suleima’s relationship with her inner world and the one around her are constantly on the point of fracturing.”
“Throughout the story Austin attempts to make a point of women’s lives during the 19th century presumably using this tactic to make Lydia appear as an independent woman with the desire to s
The story of a hero seeking to return home is one of our earliest forms of literature—the obstacles that Odysseus faced on his journey back to Ithaca are etched in our collective mind.
“Edie just wants to be herself, but trapped somewhere between the luster of her skin and her own lust for rough sex and only half-requited love, she never seems to figure out exactly who th
