“'What the hell makes you think,' she said, in her most glacial voice, 'that I am anybody’s victim?'” Soho Press, 2016 Nina's question, in an earlier volume of the series, is ironic in this context: The Considerate Killer begins with two blows to the back of Nina's head
In which I discuss some of the skinny volumes, which have nestled into my bookbag. (Meanwhile longer works, like Timothy Findley's The Piano Man's Daughter and Greg Iles' Natchez Burning, were left at home.) Stephen Thomas' The Jokes is not funny-haha, but funny-hmmm. It's not meant to be funny-haha either, although many
Excerpt from my reading journal: Having read all of Jane Hamilton's novels, and having waited since 2009 for another, I was pretty psyched for The Excellent Lombards. Grand Central Publishing, 2016 My favourites were The Short History of a Prince and The Book of Ruth, which I read
Massacre, killer, murder: when these words appear on a novel's first page, readers are fore-warned. And, yet, the first third of Sara Taylor's Boring Girls (2015) is a coming-of-age story. "It was becoming more and more apparent that I had been right all along. No one could truly understand me, unless they got
Jill Sexsmith's Somewhere a Long and Happy Life Probably Awaits You (ARP Books, 2016) "Tulip stopped at the doorway. She had grown up with the whir of a mitre saw in the background, always cutting her thoughts and sentences and songs in half. Still, the sound of the blade
