On a cold February 1892 day in Memphis, Tennessee, Alice Mitchell took her fathers straight razor and slashed the throat of her erstwhile paramour Freda Ward. This set off the sensational story that was reported all across the country, capturing the nations attention. Same-sex love was such a foreign idea that there could be no reason for it other than insanity and this is the course Alice’s attorney’s took as they prepared her case. To be sure, an insanity plea would save her life, as she […]
Oh, this was the world and I was living in the midst of it
Has it really only been two years since Karl Ove came into my life? It seems that I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t caught up in the drama and minutiae and grandeur that is his 6 book opus, My Struggle. The fourth book, alternately titled Dancing in the Dark is the latest to be translated into English and deals primarily with Karl Ove as an eighteen-year-old man on the cusp of his life as a writer. After gymnas, he has taken a job […]
Sh*t don’t mean sh*t
I’m still going back and forth on whether this should be a 4 or 3 star. Maybe I’ll get to the bottom of that conundrum by the time I finish this review. I warn you, there will be spoilerish content here as I work through my feelings on this book, so if you are sensitive to such things read no further. It wasn’t until I preordered this book that I discovered this is the second in a planned trilogy of sorts, which began with last […]
The detective above all. The detective above all.
“Happiness is the temporary result of denying the knowledge one already has.” Yeesh. This book, the second featuring Claire DeWitt, just kicked me in the gut, turned me inside out. And no, that’s not the Percocet talking. I was taken in by Claire and her world in the first novel, Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead. It was offbeat and witty and hard. I though about the characters and the place when I wasn’t reading. I was hooked. But I still wasn’t prepared […]