I picked this up from the library after browsing some old CBR reviews for inspiration. The story circles around two women in Mullaby, North Carolina: 17-year-old Emily Benedict, who comes to Mullaby to live with her extremely tall grandfather after the death of her mother Dulcie, and her 34-year-old neighbor, Julia Winterson, who has returned to Mullaby to run her father’s BBQ joint for a few years after his death. Emily quickly realizes that her mother’s legacy in Mullaby is actually pretty scandalous, and she tries […]
Serena Serena
Serena is one scary, scary woman. I loved Serena by Ron Rash except on the nights after binge reading when I woke up from nightmares about jaguars and eagles and death. Yeah, not so much fun that. This book is not for the faint of heart. It is a brutal story, but not one that feels gratuitous like Game of Thrones can at times (After watching the Red Wedding I felt completely punk’d, but that’s a story for another day). It is a tragedy in the Shakespearean sense and, beyond its […]
So Much to Recommend It, But It Didn’t Live Up: Guests on Earth
Lee Smith’s Guests on Earth had so much to recommend it. I love books about my home state, North Carolina; it promised Zelda Fitzgerald as a main character, and was centered at the Highland Hospital, a mental institution which burned to the ground in 1948, claiming the lives of nine women; one of them the world-famous Zelda herself. That sounded interesting to me, so I dove in with high hopes. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as great as I’d hoped, but it wasn’t as awful as it could […]