A female teacher engages in a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old student. This is not exactly a topic that lends itself to humor, but in the hands of Zoe Heller, readers will find biting humor along with social commentary that provokes and makes one squirm. Although the novel (shortlisted for the 2003 Man Booker Prize) is over ten years old, its topic is still relevant and the writing is superb. The novel is told from the point of view of Barbara Covett, a friend of […]
20th Century Dalloways
This short novel, a finalist for the 2004 National Book Award, deals with a circle of women who married and had children in the ’50s somewhere in New England. Much of their story is told in flashbacks from a point in the 1990s, when they have aged and have lost many of those who had been close. As a result, we get nothing like a linear narrative, and that’s not terribly important. The relationships that these women form, the choices they have made, and how […]
The More Things Change …
Winner of a Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction in 1994, this history of the Roosevelts and the home front from 1939 until FDR’s death in 1945 is a meticulously researched and engaging look at both the inner workings of the White House and the changing landscape of the US economy and society during World War II. Both the Roosevelts and the American public showed themselves to be extraordinarily brilliant and sometimes terribly flawed at a critical moment in world history. Goodwin did extensive research on her […]
No Place Like Home
The House on Mango Street is a short novel about a year in the life of a Mexican American adolescent named Esperanza. She and her family (parents, two older brothers and a younger sister named Nenny) have moved into a house of their own in Chicago for the first time. In a series of vignettes, Cisneros paints a deeply moving picture, or series of pictures, of life on Mango Street and of Esperanza’s hopes and fears. Cisneros’ background as a poet comes through in her […]