Less is indeed more in Palestinian writer Adania Shibli's U.S. debut-in-translation. The deceptively minimal 72 pages of touch hold layered shards from a young girl's life, some shining with promise, others sharp with painful gravity, but undoubtedly an existence shattered at seemingly regular intervals by violence and...
*STARRED REVIEW At the core of 1Q84 is a spectacular love story about a girl and boy who briefly held hands when they were both 10. That said, with the fiercely imaginative Murakami as author, the story’s exposition is gloriously labyrinthine: Welcome “into this enigma-filled world...
Oooh, such campy, goofy, gory fun, complete with a buff, albeit geeky APA male hero! But don't judge those dweeby glasses just yet ...
Just after finishing Divisadero, I immediately found myself missing Hope Davis' voice – she who so lullingly narrated Michael Ondaatje's dream-like bifurcated drama. So what a comforting surprise to click on Ann Patchett's Wonder and find Davis' voice gently streaming out of my headset! Serendipity indeed! As the...
Regardless of what is actually happening on the page (even brutality, sometimes tragedy), Michael Ondaatje's writing is something akin to a velvety, soothing dream. In a perfect world, reading (or better yet, listening to ...
Ready for the final three? Talk about total creep-fest ...
The pace picks up rapidly (in spite of a few too many explanatory inner babbling bubbles) in the second half of one of the most popular manga series ever, endless spin-offs and all! In vol. 7, Kira #3 and his Notebook are now in the hands...
I'm probably one of the last readers on earth to have managed to avoid this international (posthumous) publishing phenomenon. I might as well confess right now that I never finished the Harry Potter series, either (made it through the first three with gritted teeth, but...
With prolonged bleak skies across the East Coast thanks to Katia, Lee, and incoming Nate (not to mention recovery from Irene), Marisol McDonald is one brilliant, rambunctious, delightful diversion. "My name is Marisol McDonald, and I don't match," the flame-haired, brown-skinned, fearless, Peruvian Scottish American little girl announces....
What serendipitous timing that I chose to post Kevin Wilson's debut novel right after an interview with Jessica Hagedorn: Wilson's next public appearance, according to this website schedule, is on September 18 at the Brooklyn Book Festival with none other than the inimitable Mz. Hagedorn!...
When I first met the inimitable Jessica Hagedorn eight years ago – her 2003 novel Dream Jungle, in which Hagedorn intertwines the alleged discovery of an ancient "lost tribe" in the remote hills of the Philippines with the problematic filming of Apocalypse Now, was just...
Here's another intriguing premise from Ana Maria Machado – one of Brazil’s preeminent writers for children, and winner of the highly prestigious 2000 Hans Christian Andersen Award for Writing ...
Back when Kenji and the gang were young enough to be concerned about little more than just having fun, an equally young Fukube was trying very, very hard to be included. When sharing his extensive, pristine manga collection doesn't get him invited to "secret headquarters,"...
From the creator of some of my favorite kiddie books ever comes another 'free-to-be-me' invitation. Peter H. Reynolds has an uncanny ability to capture children both visually and literally ...
If the writing is a bit stilted and uneven in this middle grade novel, Ana Maria Machado – one of Brazil's preeminent writers for children – has a plausible excuse. Her fictional writer/narrator here is a schoolboy named Mariano who is "only writing – or trying to write –...
The slim, startling volume begins with an aged, family photograph which essentially contains the contents of the pages that follow ...
Need some freak-out adventures you can't put down? Time to continue the Death Note series with four more volumes that will get us to the half-way mark of this international phenomenon – in addition to the expected mega-million copy sales, anime and live-action spin-offs, novelizations, etc....
Here are the two most important things I got out of Snow: 1. it definitely had memorable glimpses of Turkish social and cultural history that I had little to no knowledge of previously; 2. Orhan Pamuk is a clever, intelligent writer, which – given his array...
The story of the brave Tessier children, begun in last year's Resistance, continues here with the focus on the middle child, teenager Paul and his courageous tenacity. The year is 1943, and the German occupation of France is an everyday nightmare. "[T]o ensure their continued control,...
All around the wide world, once a month (or so), we all get a glimpse of the full moon as our earth makes its perpetual orbit. “So come along on a lunar journey,” poet Marilyn Singer (author of over 85 children’s books!) invites readers, “to...
