All articles filed in Fiction

Silver is a washed up musician.  After making it big as part of a one-hit-wonder band, he now lives in the only apartment building in his suburban town along with other sad, middle aged, divorced men.  He has made a mess of his life with no dating prospects and no relationship with his 18-year old…

John Green’s novel is pure Young Adult fiction.  It is written from the perspective of a 16-year old and the language is thus attainable…to a degree.  You’ll find plenty of “whatever”s and other teen speak, but you’ll also find a number of words the book’s intended teen audience will only recognize if they are heavily…

The Divergent series has taken the world by storm.  Well, it has taken the teen world by storm.  Once again, I gave in and read a Young Adult novel series.  I’m still proud that I resisted Twilight, but I can’t make fun because I loved the Hunger Games.  Veronica Roth’s series was the latest sensation…

“The Paris Wife” is a work of historical fiction that brings Ernest Hemingway’s first marriage to life in Jazz age Paris.  It paints the picture of Hemingway as a rabble-rouser and charming as hell.  Hadley Richardson, his first wife, is a quiet girl about eight years his senior whose previous life was incredibly different from…

In terms of storytelling, Beautiful Ruins goes backwards, forwards, and sideways.  We start in the early 60s in an Italian fishing town so small the locals assume people only show up there by mistake (they do).  Pasquale Tursi runs the small inn on the island and is in awe of Dee, the American actress staying in…

Youthful friendships are a tricky thing.  Sometimes the bonds are formed before the personalities fully develop.  But when the friendships are made during the peak of adolescence, they are often nearly impossible to break – these are the only friends who can understand what it’s like in those moments when you are just discovering what…

The tension is high when two brothers and their wives meet for dinner at a trendy, overpriced restaurant.  One is a snob who’s focused only on showing off his wine skills while the other is negative, overly analytical, and finds something to criticize in even the smallest of gestures.  What seems to be a parody…

In this re-imagining of “The Scarlet Letter,” Hester Prynne becomes Hannah Payne and instead of a simple letter sewn onto her clothes her public shame takes the form of chroming, where a criminal’s skin is altered to match the color of their crime and then they are released into the world.  Needless to say, this…

“Where’d You Go, Bernadette” is Gone Girl Lite.  All the twists and turns but done in a humorous way.  Someone goes missing and information as to what exactly went down is exposed in a backwards manner.  Bernadette Fox was a high powered architect until she had somewhat of a breakdown, at which point she and…