tagged w/ New York Journal of Books
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“Your wife is killed by a cashew (anaphylactic shock), but there isn't time to grieve because your toddler son is always at your heels—wanting to be fed, to be played with, or to sleep next to you all night long. A change of pace seems necessary, so you decide to visit your parents in order to attend your twenty-year high school reunion. What begins as a weekend getaway quickly becomes a theater for dealing with the past—a past that you will have to re-imagine in order to have any hope of a future for you and your son.”
--Mark Yakish, A Meaning for Wife
“Toward the end of the novel there is a gutsy shift in narrative tone that lends the ending a sense of closure. In recent years, women writers such as Joan Didion and Meghan O’Rourke have published nonfiction memoir accounts of grief. In his debut novel Mr. Yakich provides the male perspective. Recommended to anyone who has experienced loss.”
David Cooper, New York Journal of Books“Your wife is killed by a cashew (anaphylactic shock), but there isn't time... more
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The subtitle of the book under review (in which the missing adjective “Heterosexual” should modify the noun “Women”) implies a question: How does erotic romance for women differ from the equivalent genre for men?The subtitle of the book under review (in which the missing adjective... more
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Something Red will be of particular interest to Red Diaper babies, but it will also appeal to readers who are interested in recent history and family dynamics.Something Red will be of particular interest to Red Diaper babies, but it will also... more
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Think back to your childhood friendships. Did you ever do or say anything that resulted in the death of a childhood friend? In K. D. Miller ‘s novella Brown Dwarf, just such a sense of culpability has haunted Toronto mystery writer and Hamilton, Ontario, native Rae Brand, neé Brenda Bray, ever since the death of her friend Jori Clement when they were twelve in 1962. The narration alternates between chapters entitled “Brenda” that are told in the third person about the twelve year old girl, and others entitled “Rae” that are addressed to Jori by the adult woman Brenda becomes.Think back to your childhood friendships. Did you ever do or say anything that... more
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Homesick is a warm, embracing novel that captures how, lacking clear boundaries, Israeli neighbors observe one another’s private lives close up. The reader quickly becomes just such an observer and feels like a part of a close-knit, extended family whose members are not necessarily related. In this and other respects, Eshkol Nevo’s first novel reminds this reader of the novels of his literary fathers, Amos Oz and A. B. Yehoshua.Homesick is a warm, embracing novel that captures how, lacking clear boundaries,... more
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