Arghhh. If this book hadn’t been on my I-pad, I would have thrown it across the room as I read the last line. I know that I’ve said this before, but I’m really getting tired of YA books that simply stop mid-storyline—to be continued. It feels alternately like a money grab (instead of giving you one longer book, we’re going to split this puppy into three parts—otherwise known as The Hobbit effect) or simply lazy storytelling. I want to simply say, “Go watch the first […]
Family Dinners Are Killer
We begin with an anniversary. A family prepares to mourn the one year loss of a son and brother but there are two problems–the family is so fractured that they don’t even want to be in the same room as each other and two, there’s a madman who plans on killing them all because of the secrets they are keeping from one another. From the outside the family seems to have everything. They have a loving dog, a gigantic house with all the fancy amenities, […]
Sad Birthday Parties and Smoking Wrecks
This was like rifling through a box of Polaroids of a young woman growing into an artist. The collection of short stories feels of a whole piece, telling stories of Eastern Europe and of moral dilemmas. There are no easy choices and there are no easy consequences in any of the works. Makkai has had four stories selected for the various editions of the Best American Non-Required Reading, and it’s easy to see why. While these are melancholy and beautiful, there’s a wry sense of […]
Chuck! It’s Your Cousin, Marvin Berry! Don’t Read This Goddamn Book!
I guess I just liked her earlier stuff. The concept and conceit of this book is ridiculous. A television writer tries to save her marriage by talking into a magic telephone that allows her to communicate with her husband in the past. Only, none of that matters, because she can’t change the past. If every time she talked on the phone, she changed something or made things worse and had to fix it, that would be an amazing novel. If I had the power, I’d […]