by Whitney Smyth | Jan 11, 2019 | Archived Reviews (pre-April 2020), General Fiction, Historical Fiction, Sponsored, War & Military
Paul Sutton is a bit of a wandering soul. Recently out of his tour during the Vietnam War, Navy Air Reserve, Paul is attempting to get back to a normal life. Yet, college and his girlfriend Mary don’t hold any charm for him, nothing really does… except for...
by Seniye Groff | Dec 10, 2018 | Archived Reviews (pre-April 2020), General Fiction
Anne Tyler creates characters easy to identify with, easy to love, and certainly easy to be engrossed by. In Clock Dance, the reader meets Willa Drake at four important points in her life: 1967, 1977, 1997, and 2017. In 1967 Willa watches her parents’ marriage...
by Philip Rafferty | Dec 7, 2018 | Archived Reviews (pre-April 2020), General Fiction
Julian Barnes short new novel, The Only Story, is reminiscent of his previous Man Book Prize winning novel The Sense of Ending in that it is a novel in which an older man looks back on his life. In the case of this book the narrator, Paul, is recalling the story of a...
by Howard Leighton | Nov 23, 2018 | Archived Reviews (pre-April 2020), General Fiction, Mystery, Crime & Thriller
Ilka Jensen and her mother Karin live in Copenhagen, Denmark. Ilka works as a school photographer. They were abandoned by Ilka’s father, Paul, when she was seven years old. He moved to live in the United States leaving large debts including a funeral home. The only...
by Philip Rafferty | Nov 21, 2018 | Archived Reviews (pre-April 2020), General Fiction
Tommy Orange’s debut There There is one of the most lauded books of 2018 and for good reason. Orange, a creative writing teacher at the Institute of American Indian Arts, opens this novel with an essay on Native American culture that is fresh, innovative, and sets up...
by Philip Rafferty | Nov 9, 2018 | Archived Reviews (pre-April 2020), General Fiction, Portland Authors
Portland based writer Willy Vlautin’s latest book, Don’t Skip Out on Me, moves away from the Pacific Northwest and plants us in Nevada. Horace Hopper is a young man who has spent his entire life on a Nevada Sheep Ranch. Adopted by a kind couple, Mr. and Mrs....