This was one of those teenage wish-fulfillment books that tried to be more than that, and sort of succeeded, but…not really. “But when the rain first began to fall, we didn’t see the bigger picture…When it started, the only thing I cared about was kissing Jessie Ford.” The town of Aberdeen has been sinking for years, ever since the old mill shut down and the population began to drop. But after a record season of storms, and the discovery that the town shouldn’t have been built on such low […]
“But the earth turns, and old ways are reexamined.”
I bet you’ll see this one on a lot of best-of lists this year, if you haven’t already. It just came out, but it’s had a lot of hype — and it lives up to it! “She was charmed by the motions of trout. How they take their forms from the pressures of another world, the cold forge of water. Their drift, their mystery, the way they turn and let the current take them, take them, with passive grace. They turn again, tumbling like leaves, […]
“If you can stomach it, you’re invited to watch . . . as I eat myself to death.”
You remember that book Dumplin’ that came out last year, with the overweight Texas girl who yeah, dealt with some issues because of her weight (as well as other unrelated problems), but overall felt good about herself and her place in the world? Yeah, this book is nothing like that. “I hated thinking about death – not because I was afraid of it, but because, for some reason, every time I did, I felt this strange wave of sadness that death was actually so far off. Sometimes […]
Buffalo Soldiers in Italy
I’ve read a lot of books set during World War II, but only a couple that centered on Italy, and this is the first I’ve read that’s dealt specifically with the Army’s 92nd Division — aka, the Buffalo Soldiers. “To fight the enemy? Which enemy? The Germans? The Italians? The enemy was irony and truth and hypocrisy, that was the real enemy. That was the enemy that was killing him.” Towards the end of World War II, four soldiers with the 92nd Division get separated from […]