“Rooney’s characters may get caught in a 'tangled web,' but they learn how to live with decency and courage and compassion. Normal may be a lot less important than one thinks.”
A distraught husband, Ronnie Armitrage, is found returning to his car in a field, saying his wife may have run toward the ocean after an argument and drowned.
“Archer’s bold thriller structure bares all motives and manipulations, so there are few surprises and no secrets here, but the suspense of each interaction resembles the final rounds of a c
“Though this is far from the modern crime fiction she’s known for, McDermid weaves Queen Macbeth from the same understanding of longings for safety, justice, and yes, love.”
The Empusium reprises many aspects of Thomas Mann’s The MagicMountain: a sanatorium (this one in Lower Silesia) for the treatment of tuberculosis; a time period set in 1
“’It’s hardly surprising that crime fiction, with its insistence upon one inarguable ending and a landscape in which the guilty are punished and the innocent freed to continue with their li
“a beautiful blend of reality and the paranormal, a fresh way of looking at life and a guide to moving beyond guilt and sorrow into a world where hope and light are possible.”
Novels about academia almost always veer toward satire (see Richard Russo’s Straight Man, Jane Smiley’s Moo, or Zadie Smith’s On Beauty) because the egos, trappings, and
“Carly’s upcoming disappointments and confrontation with reality can’t spoil the sense of looking through a knothole to witness what we’ve been told not to watch or hint at.”
“In those years, the hardest of my childhood, Echo felt like a kindred spirit. I memorized her lines in slugger 8. I practiced her stance on the field in the mirror.