Ask the Passengers by A.S. King is a touching little book about something I really hadn’t thought about more than just in passing (and really that’s a huge shame on me)– and that is–what is it like to be a teenager and not be exactly sure of one’s sexuality? I grew up knowing that boys did something for me–it was very clear to me at the age of three when I started slobbering on my TV whenever John Schneider slid across the hood of the […]
Feminism, Communism and Friendship
First, I’m thrilled to report that this third installment in the Neapolitan Novels series is not the last! The fourth is due later this year, and it’s a good thing because this novel, like the previous, like every good soap opera, leaves us hanging. How have these stories not been turned into a televised series? In book three, Ferrante takes us further into the loves and lives of Elena Greco and Lila Cerullo. Friends since childhood in working class Naples, they have become somewhat estranged […]
Today I Learned About Coonasses and Tushhogs
It’s not what you tell so much as how you tell it, and this second of the Bayou trilogy is a corker. A trio of robbers, members of a prison gang called The Wing, are hitting poker games run by the gangster mucketymucks who run much of St. Bruno. Shade is partnered with his former childhood pal Shuggie Zeck, who’s now a bagman for Mr. B, and neither of them particularly are proud of what the other has become. It’s a violent and brutal tale, […]
It’s All Been Said Before
This book felt like an advertisement for Goodkind’s self-published prequel The First Confessor, as Goodkind ties those characters into the entire narrative for this book, which when you cut out the needless overhashing and repetition, comes to about four chapters of action. This should have been split between this book and the next, not stretched for an entire goddamn book. But it worked. I’m now reading The First Confessor. Sigh.