Eight years have passed since Jeffrey Eugenides won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (as well as too many other accolades to list) for this, his second novel, and nine years since it was first published. Nine years later (pattern forming here? – his debut The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex are also...
*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...
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...
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 –...
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,...
Here I go again starting with a book backwards … in the ending “Translator’s Note,” Paul Starkey writes, “Readers of Maryam’s Maze who are already familiar with the author’s short stories will quickly feel themselves at home in this more extended work, which again reveals...
We all probably have a little bit of devil in us, but what do you do when you find out that your birthfather is Satan himself? Twin brothers (and, not surprisingly, polar opposites), Rin and Yukio, have been raised all their lives by Father Fujimoto,...
Heidi is not your average soon-to-be-13-year-old: "One thing I knew for a fact, from the time I knew anything at all, was that I didn't have a father. What I had was Mama and Bernadette, and as far as I was concerned, that was plenty."...
When I handed this striking volume to my son (as I often do with most graphic titles, as they seem to be the best way to get him to read), he instantly replied with "oh, I read that already." I insisted that couldn't be possible as...
The Pope is on his way to Japan in time for the opening ceremony of the 2015 World Expo ...
*STARRED REVIEW In an introductory galley letter, National Book Award winner Ha Jin (Waiting, 1999) announces his intent to reclaim American missionary Minnie Vautrin’s heroism during the 1937 Nanjing massacre: “She suffered and ruined herself helping others, but she became a legend. At least her story has...
Here's how I finally came to read The History of Love ...
