Like Katherine Dunn's Geek Love, Alice Hoffman's novel begins from a place of belonging. Scribner - Simon & Schuster, 2014 Coralie is a professional mermaid in early twentieth-century Coney Island, who grows up with the Wolfman and various other characters who seem to step from the pages of
The word 'goodish' entered my vocabulary thanks to an observation that Carol Shields makes of two female friends in The Republic of Love. (General increased usage of -ish also ensued.) "They love the word ‘goodish,’ as in goodish sunsets, goodish travel bargains, goodish men." The title and cover of Suzanne Sutherland's When
A novel about a woman who becomes obsessed with a novel? Europa Editions, 2011 Just the sort of story which is guaranteed to appeal to a voracious (even, at times, overly excitable) reader. Even if the novel with which the main character is obsessed is Robert Louis Stevenson's
"There’s no backstitching in stories. Nothing can be locked in place." So says a character in Studio Saint-Ex, but readers of Ania Szado's second novel might disagree; she seems to have no trouble locking a good story in place. She began where all good stories begin, with a fascination. In
It begins with a short but vividly drawn scene: two lovers alone in a room in Paris in 1917. Sensorily rich and broadly sketched: the reader is immediately engaged. Not only by the substance, but by a couple of unexpected phrases therein: questions arise. Those questions are soon set aside
