Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891) Penguin, 1978 She's "goodness made interesting". That's what Irving Howe calls Tess, the main character in Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Interesting is one way to put it. Not all of his Victorian readers found it so however. His religious skepticism and his
Witi Ihimaera's The Whale Rider (1987) Harcourt Inc, 2003 The Whale Rider is set on the East Coast of New Zealand, and that is, indeed, where Paikea is the tipuna ancestor, but this is a novel, not a narrative of myth and culture. It is a story of one fictional
Suzette Mayr's Venous Hum Arsenal Pulp, 2004 Yes, that's right: it's a mouth. Somehow too many canines, pink fleshy tongue: it's the cover of Venous Hum. Eye-catching from the start, but it makes more sense after you've finished reading. "It's an exclamation mark at the end of a sentence announcing the end
Heidi W. Durrow’s The Girl Who Fell From the Sky Algonquin Books - Workman Publishing, 2010 Initially I kept an eye on The Bellwether winners as an extension of my admiration of Barbara Kingsolver's writing. But after I read Hillary Jordan's novel, I kept an eye on the prize because Mudbound was one
Joan Bauer's Squashed Putnam - Penguin, 1992 Ellie Morgan, sixteen years old, is our main character in Squashed: "A funny fast-paced book about an ordinary girl with an extraordinary ambition." That's what the New York Times Book Review says about the novel. And here's a taste of Ellie, as created by
