Writer Kseniya Melnik moved with her family from Magadan to Alaska when she was 15. In this collection of short stories, she deftly introduces readers, who most likely are unfamiliar with Siberia — home of the Gulag prison camp system, to the people of the cold and remote city of Magadan in the Russian Northeast. The stories are set in the post-Stalin years, from the 1950s with the Khruschev thaw, through the Brezhnev stagnation and into the age of Glasnost and Perestroika. These are not […]
It wasn’t a horror novel like I thought, but a family vacation can be very scary.
I had no idea who Emma Straub was until I picked this off of the new release table at the library last week. I assumed that maybe she was Peter Straub’s daughter, and thought I was getting myself a fun horror story for the end of the summer. Well. I don’t know if she is actually related to Peter. Maybe? And this was actually a pretty fun book. I’d compare her writing toJonathan Tropper — telling a difficult story with humor and wit. And while I […]
Glorious (but you already knew that)
I know. I’m arriving late to the Rainbow Rowell party. I don’t know why but there was something about her books that didn’t make me fall over myself to read them. Maybe it was the pastel covers, the cute titles, I don’t know. Maybe it’s that her first name is Rainbow, for sobbing out loud. Whatever it was, I was not actively campaigning against her books, I was just not that interested. And you all LOVE her too. Despite all this evidence that I should really […]
Uninvolving
When this book came out three years ago, it got a lot of attention, it won some prizes, it garnered excellent reviews and word of mouth. I put it straight on my to read list, as I love a bit of a historical novel and this one sounded kind of gruesome with it, which is always a winner. Yet somehow I only just got round to reading it now. I don’t know why. It was only after I started reading that I discovered it’s the […]