This is a moving book and certainly worth reading, but I had such high hopes after the first few chapters and ended up feeling a little disappointed that the amazingness didn’t quite carry through to the end. This is a coming of age story of a Nigerian girl, Ijeoma, set in Nigeria in the late 1960s. Ijeoma’s world is disrupted when her beloved father is killed in a civil war (the Biafran War) and her mother sends her away to live with a teacher’s family while […]
Furiously Ambitious
I know there are some legitimate issues with this book, but I’m giving it five stars for its pure ambition and energetic writing. I was quite reluctant to read this, actually, because I couldn’t get through Groff’s first novel, The Monsters of Templeton (I should mention that I started it when I was 36 weeks pregnant, so my attention span was not tip top). After seeing this one so consistently on the must-read lists for 2015, I picked it up at the library and couldn’t put […]
Hell Hath No Fury…
This is a quick-paced, brutally frank, and sometimes hilarious look at a woman scorned. The first line of the book jumps right into the action — “One April afternoon, right after lunch, my husband announced that he wanted to leave me.” On the surface, this is a story that’s been told a million times. Husband has an affair, leaves wife. Wife feels desperate, sad, angry. Wife starts to feel better and then finds love again. But Ferrante is a brilliant writer who can purposely pick […]
I Love The Author More Than The Book
I love Jennifer Weiner. I love that she invents terms like Franzenfreude. And that she fights back against sexism in book reviews and isn’t afraid to name names. I love reading her essays and interviews and I have even watched her “vlog” on YouTube. I think she’s super smart and funny and I’m certain I would melt if I had the chance to meet her or listen to her speak live. While I’m a fan, it had been well over a decade since I had […]