All articles filed in Book Reviews

One perk of Hurricane Sandy was having plenty of time to read.  I had plenty of time to tear through a couple novels, including Chris Bohjalian’s “The Sandcastle Girls.”  I had previously read “Midwives,” also by Bohjalian, and enjoyed it.  The synopsis for this particular book didn’t look as interesting as some of his other novels,…

Like the circus itself, the writing of The Night Circus is mystical and enchanting, filled with ornate scenes of ice gardens and paper forests that can only come from the most romantic and whimsical of imaginations.  If this is what runs through author Erin Morgenstern’s mind on a regular basis, I would love to take a…

Jordan Belfort’s memoir about making millions in the stock brokerage game is too wild to believe.  This is the yuppie “American Psycho”/”Wall Street [the movie]” era, but it’s a real account.  I didn’t realize it was possible to make that much money.  What is even more jaw dropping is reading what Belfort does with the…

Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl is good from the get-go but around a quarter of the way in, it really starts picking up.  Right when you hit the halfway point, it hits “can’t put it down” status.  That’s exactly what happened to me so I stayed up til 2 AM on a Friday night to finish the…

I have loved Andy Cohen since I first saw him hosting a reunion show on Bravo.  So many people, men included, soak up salacious pop culture gossip but are afraid to admit it because it’s considered lowbrow.  Andy full-on owns his love for all things celebrity, particularly 80s icons.  But what I liked most about…

Whether innocent or guilty, 14-year-old Jacob is a powerfully disturbed boy, something his parents grapple with understanding as they undergo his trial for murder of a classmate.  As details of the murder emerge, Jacob’s parents (and the reader) wrestle with the distressing possible reality that their child may have done something heinous. Jacob’s father Andy…

I’ve never read The Age of Innocence, so I can’t really make any comparisons of Francesca Segal’s updated version, The Innocents, to the original.  However, I can tell you that I enjoyed the modern take on the classic.  This version moves the setting from New York to Northwest London and instead of focusing on the…

The fact that this book was written by a gay, Jewish guy with tons of crazy life experiences should have meant it would be a THK favorite.  Unfortunately, while each essay should have written itself (cabana boy at a hot South Beach hotel, gay republicans, and Hooters Air), they all seemed to fall flat. Rakoff…

Toni Morrison is one of the most lauded writers of our time and I can understand why after experiencing her unique structure in this novel, Tar Baby.  The [3rd person] narration’s focus flows from character to character without pause, mirroring the Caribbean waters that play their own role in the novel. Writing prowess aside, I…