Book Review: Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt
Carol Rifka Brunt created a debut novel with a huge emotional wallop. Tell the Wolves I’m Home hits the pain of teen years, family tensions, grief, and a looming virus. It’s set in the 1980s, when AIDS was just coming into the national consciousness. June, our 14-year...Book Review: Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
Bernardine Evaristo writes a prose poetic novel, honoring a wide-ranging group of black British women in her 2019 book Girl, Woman, Other. The women represent many walks of life, various generations, and diverse personalities. They connect with each other, but the...Book Review: The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson
Maggie Nelson and Harry Dodge have a non traditional family, while doing common things like struggling to get pregnant and raising two children together. In her memoir, The Argonauts, Nelson explores the unique aspects of their lives. At the same time, she discusses...Book Review: This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel
Laurie Frankel brings us inside a raucous and somewhat unconventional Wisconsin family in This Is How It Always Is. Rosie and Penn, respectively a doctor and a writer, are the parents of four boys when she gets pregnant again. Every time she’s expecting they hope for...Book Review: The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
Madeline Miller tells a story replete with Greek gods, kings, warriors, battles, and death. And yet what it’s really about is the love between Achilles and Patroclus. Both young men are high born princes. Achilles is also half god, with a human father and goddess...Book Review: The Mermaids Singing by Val McDermid
After listening to her nonfiction book, Forensics, reading Val McDermid’s psychological thriller series was an easy choice. I liked her detailed writing style, and was glad to see it here also. The Mermaids Singing is told from two points of view. First we have the...Book Review: River Queens by Alexander Watson
River Queens is the story of a voyage through America. But more than that, it’s the story of Alexander Watson, Dale Harris, their dog Doris Faye, and their boat the Betty Jane. It made me laugh, learn, and even shed a tear.Watson and Harris are landlubbers from Dallas...Book Review: The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
Rebecca Makkai tells two intertwined stories in The Great Believers. One starts in 1980s Chicago, the other in 2015 Paris. Held within are the lives of two friends, Yale and Fiona, along with many others. In the mid-1980s, the world was just beginning to understand...Book Review: A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
With her novel, A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara makes a beautiful piece of pottery. Then she drops it on the floor, where it shatters into pieces. Yet before the book finishes, Yanagihara has created what the Japanese call kintsugi. Kintsugi is the art of taking...Book Review: Affinity by Sarah Waters
Sarah Waters’ historical novel, Affinity, is about two women imprisoned in very different circumstances. Selina Dawes is in a literal prison, put there because of her own actions. (Of course, it’s never quite that simple.) On the other hand, Margaret Prior is...Book Review: Not My Father’s Son by Alan Cumming
In Not My Father’s Son, Alan Cumming writes a moving tale of intersecting lives. One of them is his own. He tells how his father and grandfather affected him, in vastly different ways. I listened on audio, and I’d recommend hearing Cumming tell his own story. His...Book Review: The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne
John Boyne creates a multifaceted, intensely human main character in The Heart’s Invisible Furies. Cyril Avery is a man I’ll never forget, both for his flaws and his richness of heart. The moment I finished the book, I knew I was in for a whopper of a book...Book Review: The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters
The Paying Guests is a deeply melodramatic novel from much-lauded author Sarah Waters. It’s a genre-buster as well, since part of it is LGTBQ romance, part historical fiction, and part mystery/thriller. I chose it to fulfill prompts on two of my 2017 reading...Bookshop.Org Affiliate
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I will definitely recommend Kick Pain in the Kitchen to my patients: Those who are looking to avoid pharmaceutical treatment and those who want to combine western medicine with alternative therapies.
Jane A. Swartz
ARNP, MSN, Rheumatology Nurse Practitioner
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