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Trust by Hernan Diaz (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Dec 20, 2022 | RELAX: Historical Fiction

Trust by Hernan Diaz is everything I want in a historical fiction novel. And it’s no wonder the book landed on so many “best of 2022.” Diaz writes from four interconnected points of view while telling the story of a financial wizard and philanthropist. Set in the...

Alias Grace — Margaret Atwood (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Dec 10, 2022 | RELAX: Historical Fiction

Alias Grace is a character study written by Margaret Atwood. It also focuses on the burgeoning world of alienists, who pioneered the study of the mind, mental health, and psychology as we know it today. Just for good measure, Atwood throws in mysterious killings. This...

Sara Gruen — At the Water’s Edge (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Oct 4, 2022 | RELAX: Historical Fiction

At the Water’s Edge by Sara Gruen is tepid historical fiction with unlikable characters in this fish out of water novel. Three feckless and privileged young Americans travel to a village in the Scottish Highlands to find the Loch Ness monster. Because of the journey,...

Babel by R. F. Kuang (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Aug 23, 2022 | RELAX: Fantasy, Horror, Sci-Fi, RELAX: Historical Fiction

Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution, is precisely what I expect from writer and historian R. F. Kuang. It’s complex and highly literate. Plus, the struggle between colonizers and those they oppress is at its...

Chinua Achebe — Things Fall Apart (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Aug 12, 2022 | RELAX: Historical Fiction

The late writer Chinua Achebe originally published his remarkable book, Things Fall Apart, in 1959. That it still lands on “best books ever” lists is a testament to its lasting effect on readers. Late to the party, I just read it for the first time this year. The book...

Kali Fajardo-Anstine — Woman of Light (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Aug 6, 2022 | RELAX: Historical Fiction

Kali Fajardo-Anstine delivers a portrait of womanhood in Colorado in her debut novel, Woman of Light. She tells the story of multiple women across three generations of an indigenous and mixed-race family. Moving back and forth across time, Fajardo-Anstine connects the...

Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jul 27, 2022 | RELAX: Historical Fiction

Dandelion Wine is a masterwork in the art of connected stories or vignettes. In the hands of Ray Bradbury, small-town America in the summer of 1928 comes alive. Kids run free and adults sip glasses of dandelion wine on their porches. But there’s also an unsettling...

Naomi Hirahara — Clark and Division (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jul 22, 2022 | RELAX: Historical Fiction

Naomi Hirahara offers historical fiction and intrigue in her 2021 book Clark and Division. The time is the middle 1940s, which means that the story begins in Manzanar, one of the many World War II Japanese internment camps. As the Ito family considers leaving the camp...

Larry Kramer — The Normal Heart and The Destiny of Me (Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jul 14, 2022 | LEARN: Chronic Illness, RELAX: Historical Fiction

Larry Kramer created seminal works of gay rights and AIDS epidemic history in his deeply personal plays, The Normal Heart and The Destiny of Me. Both plays revolve around Ned Weeks, a gay man living and working in New York City in the 1980s. They are heartbreaking and...

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jun 18, 2022 | RELAX: Historical Fiction

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt is many books wrapped up into one package. It’s a character study, coming-of-age, buddy story with a heist thrown in for good measure. And the reason I picked it is the aesthetic of dark academia, which is a hot trend in bookish circles...

Kelley Armstrong — A Rip Through Time (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | May 16, 2022 | RELAX: Fantasy, Horror, Sci-Fi, RELAX: Historical Fiction, RELAX: Mystery-Thriller

In A Rip Through Time, Kelley Armstrong creates Vancouver police detective Mallory Atkinson. Mallory is visiting her gravely ill grandmother in Edinburgh, Scotland. The year is 2019. Until one evening when Mallory goes jogging and unexpectedly finds herself waking up...

Brit Bennett – The Vanishing Half (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Mar 16, 2022 | RELAX: Historical Fiction

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett is a complex and layered novel about secrets. At the center of the story are twin sisters, Stella and Desiree. Raised in small-town Louisiana, everyone around them focused on the color of their skin. The entire community of...

Vaddey Ratner — In the Shadow of the Banyan (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Feb 17, 2022 | RELAX: Historical Fiction

In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner is about a gentle girl in a brutal country. While the book is fictional, its roots exist in the author’s own life. This enhances the intimacy of the tale. Young Raami is only seven when civil war overwhelms Cambodia. As a...

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Feb 3, 2022 | RELAX: Historical Fiction

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead is a multi-layered book. The publisher promotes it as, “… a gloriously entertaining novel of heists, shakedowns, and rip-offs set in Harlem in the 1960s.” And yes, all of that is in there. But Whitehead also waxes philosophical about...

The Hungry Tide — Amitav Ghosh (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jan 5, 2022 | RELAX: Historical Fiction

Author Amitav Ghosh introduced me to both the Sundarban Islands and Irrawaddy dolphins. The islands are at the easternmost part of India and continue into Bangladesh. I first discovered Ghosh’s unique style of environmentally conscious fiction in Gun Island. That book...

Diana Gabaldon — Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Dec 30, 2021 | RELAX: Historical Fiction

Diana Gabaldon takes on the politics and harsh realities of the Revolutionary War in her newest Outlander book, Go Tell the Bees that I Am Gone. Of course, it still focuses on the time-traveling family of Claire and Jamie Fraser. But the story’s intensity centers on...
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