1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami doesn’t lend himself to easy categorization. Though his prose is spare, almost styleless, it’s more supple than muscular, and though his stories are often occupied with mundane domesticities, they’re also often founded in the surreal. It’s no surprise, then, that Murakami’s long-awaited latest, 1Q84, isn’t easy to shelf –it’s at home among either fantasy, thriller or hard-boiled noir – but one thing’s for sure: this book is grotesquely Murakami. That is, quiet domesticity punctuates adventures tenuously connected to reality, and yet for all its faults – and some have argued there are many – this is a book that haunts you long after you’re done, a book that, like a jealous lover, won’t let you move on.
December 31, 2011
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Judi Clark · 
One Comment
Tags: 2012 PB Release, Knopf, Literary, Speculative (Beyond Reality) · Posted in: Contemporary, Literary, Noir, Speculative (Beyond Reality), World Literature
THE MARRIAGE PLOT by Jeffrey Eugenides
“Reader, I married him.”
What sensitive reader hasn’t thrilled to the last lines of the novel JANE EYRE, when the mousy and unprepossessing girl triumphantly returns to windswept Thornfield as a mature woman, marrying her one-time employer and great love, Mr. Rochester?
That era of these great wrenching love stories is now dead and gone. Or is it?
November 16, 2011
· Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: 2012 PB Release, College Setting, Contemporary, FSG, Literary, Rhode Island · Posted in: Award Winning Author, Contemporary, Literary, NE & New York, Reading Guide, Story Retold, Uncategorized
BEFORE THE END, AFTER THE BEGINNING by Dagoberto Gilb
Dagoberto Gilb’s latest book, BEFORE THE END, AFTER THE BEGINNING, although a slight collection, is loaded with insight and humor. It’s a book about identity, about the tension between limiting factors outside our control– our race, our class, our gender – and our complexity as individuals.
November 9, 2011
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Tags: 2012 PB Release, Grove Press, Latin American, Short Stories · Posted in: Award Winning Author, Class - Race - Gender, Humorous, Identity, Latin American, Mexico, Short Stories, Texas
11/22/63: A NOVEL by Stephen King
Dedicated Stephen King fans are in for an epic treat—an odyssey, a Fool’s journey, an adventure with romance. A genre-bending historical novel with moral implications, this story combines echoes of Homer, H.G. Wells, Don Quixote, Quantum Leap (the old TV show), Jack Finney’s TIME AND AGAIN, and even a spoonful of meta-King himself, the czar of popular fiction.
November 8, 2011
· Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: 1950s, 2012 PB Release, 2013 - authors with books coming out in 2013, Historical, JFK, Speculative (Beyond Reality), Time Travel · Posted in: Alternate History, Award Winning Author, Real Event Fiction, Real People Fiction, Speculative (Beyond Reality), Texas, Time Period Fiction
THE AFFAIR by Lee Child
What’s a writer to do when his action hero ages? One option is to go back in time.
In THE AFFAIR, Lee Child flashes back to 1997, when Major Jack Reacher (his thirty-six year old protagonist and first-person narrator) was an army MP. Leon Garber, Reacher’s commanding officer, sends Jack to Carter Crossing, Mississippi, to monitor a potentially explosive situation.
October 22, 2011
· Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: 1990s, 2012 - authors with books published this year, 2012 PB Release, 2013 - authors with books coming out in 2013, Lee Child, Sleuth, Thriller · Posted in: Sleuths Series, Thriller/Spy/Caper, US South
THE FORGOTTEN WALTZ by Anne Enright
Anne Enright, author of the 2007 Booker Prize winner, THE GATHERING, has written a new novel called THE FORGOTTEN WALTZ. It is told from the point of view of Gina Moynihan who has a lust-filled affair with a married man, Sean Vallely. They first meet at a garden party hosted by Anne’s sister Fiona, and progresses from there. At first there are innocent (and not so innocent) looks, and then on a business trip in Switzerland, the affair begins in earnest.
October 21, 2011
· Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: 1990s, 2012 PB Release, Adultery, Around-the-World, lyrical · Posted in: Award Winning Author, Betrayal, Contemporary, Family Matters, Ireland, Life Choices, Literary, World Literature
