Tag Archives: fiction
Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village
If you’ve ever read or watched any of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple stories, or seen the Midsomer Murders TV series, or even some of the episodes of Inspectors Morse or Lewis, then you’ll know that picturesque English villages are actually … Continue reading
Bewilderment
In Richard Powers’ latest novel, Bewilderment, astrobiologist Theo Byrne is a single father struggling to raise his nine-year-old son Robin. Robin himself struggles with emotional turmoil for which there’s no clear diagnosis. “So far the votes are two Asperger’s, one probable … Continue reading
The Last White Man
One morning in an unnamed city in an unnamed country, a white man named Anders wakes up to discover that his skin has turned dark brown. His facial features have changed too. He doesn’t recognize himself in the mirror. … Continue reading
The Ministry for the Future
It’s the year 2024. After most nations fail to meet their commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement, delegates to the annual Conference of the Parties (COP) create a “subsidiary body” to defend and protect future generations of citizens and all … Continue reading
Greenwood
I was on vacation last week and took one of my periodic side trips into fiction. Greenwood, by Canadian writer Michael Christie, is a novel about family and trees and the relationship between them. It spans four generations of the … Continue reading
The Overstory
A simple description of The Overstory by Richard Powers is that it’s a novel about nine people and their relationships with trees. Sounds weird, right? Well, The Overstory is definitely an unusual novel. But it’s much more, and much stranger … Continue reading
Whereabouts
Whereabouts is Jhunpa Lahiri’s first novel in ten years. I don’t know what to make of it. I’ve read a couple of Lahiri’s earlier books: Interpreter of Maladies, her debut collection of short stories for which she won a Pulitzer … Continue reading
A Burning
A Burning By Megha Majumdar Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2020 Faced with a difficult moral choice, would you do the right thing? What if doing the right thing might cost you your job or the chance of a promotion? … Continue reading
Where the Crawdads Sing
Where the Crawdads Sing By Delia Owens G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 2018 I don’t read much fiction these days, but it’s summertime and the last book I read was about the history of calculus, so I figured I’d try … Continue reading
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