Author Archives: Jenny

Trauma

Posted on May 17, 2013

In Patrick McGrath’s Trauma, Charlie Weir is a psychiatrist in New York in the 1970s, dealing with veterans coming back from the Vietnam War. In his spare time, he counsels victims of rape and abuse. “In my work,” he says, … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction | 2 Comments

Some Assembly Required

Posted on May 16, 2013

Last year, Teresa went to a book signing with Anne and Sam Lamott (she gets to do things like that all the time, because she lives near Washington, D.C. and not in the Inland Empire – no, I am not jealous, why are … Continue reading →

Posted in Memoir, Nonfiction | 2 Comments

NOS4A2

Posted on May 14, 2013

Charles Talent Manx roams the country in his 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith, stealing children. He doesn’t want to hurt them — oh, no! He wants to take them to Christmasland, a place not on any map, where the children will stay … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Speculative Fiction | Tagged | 9 Comments

Little Dorrit

Posted on May 10, 2013

Little Dorrit is divided into two sections. The first is Poverty, and the second is Riches. Is this all you need to know about its imagery? Of course not — but if you add the title of the first chapter, … Continue reading →

Posted in Classics, Fiction | 30 Comments

Permanent Rose

Posted on May 8, 2013

Other Jenny put me on to these books about the Casson family, by Hilary McKay, some time ago. By now, after I’ve finished the third book in the series, I’m a complete convert: I’m at the point where I’m trying … Continue reading →

Posted in Children's / YA Lit, Fiction | 3 Comments

The Book of Night Women

Posted on May 7, 2013

I read The Book of Night Women by Marlon James a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve been putting off writing about it — not because I don’t have anything to say, but because it’s such an interesting and complex book … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Historical Fiction | 4 Comments

The Hidden

Posted on April 30, 2013

When Ben Mercer arrives in Greece, he’s escaping the flaming ruins of his marriage. He’s a classically trained Cambridge scholar (“Class-Anth,” he says later), but he takes a job at a meat grill in Metamorphosis, a suburb of Athens. There, … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction | 7 Comments

The End of the Affair

Posted on April 26, 2013

There’s a story I love about Graham Greene. In 1949, the New Statesman held a contest for parodies of Greene’s writing style. Greene himself entered the contest under a pseudonym, and won second (!) prize. Sixteen years later, in 1965, … Continue reading →

Posted in Classics, Fiction | 16 Comments

In the Woods

Posted on April 23, 2013

Blogging has been a wonderful memory tool for me. Before I started keeping records of what I read and what I think about it, I used to wander about in the library, thinking, “Have I read that one, or…?” and … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Mysteries | 14 Comments

The Waves

Posted on April 16, 2013

I’ve been waiting to write about The Waves until after I met with my Read More Woolf reading group. I hoped that our meeting would give me some extra insight about this difficult and complex novel — I already appreciated … Continue reading →

Posted in Classics, Fiction | 10 Comments