FullReviews Index - page 3
Then We Came to the End
I knew after reading the first paragraph in "Then We Came to the End" that Joshua Ferris had nailed it. He utterly nails the boredom, the cynicism, and the resignation that is work in the corporate cubicle culture. What The Office brought to television, what Office Space brought to the movies, and what Dilbert brought to comics, Then We Came to the End brings to literature.
At First Sight
Nicholas Sparks brings back two characters from his bestseller, True Believer. New Yorker, Jeremy Marsh is living in the tiny town of Boone Creek, North Carolina, married to Lexie Darnell, the love of his life, and anticipating the birth of their daughter. But, just as his life seems to be settling into a blissful pattern, an unsettling and mysterious message reopens old wounds and sets off a chain of events that will forever change the course of this young couple's marriage.
The Choice
Travis Parker has everything a man could want: a good job, loyal friends, even a waterfront home in small-town North Carolina. In full pursuit of the good life - boating, swimming , and regular barbecues with his good-natured buddies -- he holds the vague conviction that a serious relationship with a woman would only cramp his style. That is, until Gabby Holland moves in next door.
Engleby
Something about Mike Engleby is not quite right. When he becomes fixated on a classmate and she goes missing, we are left with the looming question: Is Mike Engleby involved? Mike becomes more and more detached from those around him in an almost anti-coming-of-age. His inability to relate to others and his undependable memory lead the reader down an unclear and often darkly humorous path where one is never completely comfortable or confident about what is true.
The Entitled
In The Entitled, six-time National Sportswriter of the Year and NPR commentator Frank Deford takes the reader deep inside the game of baseball and evokes the roles of the players as well as the one man who can make or break a team and a season.
Free Food for Millionaires
Casey Han's four years at Princeton gave her many things, "But no job and a number of bad habits." Casey's parents, who live in Queens, are Korean immigrants working in a dry cleaner, desperately trying to hold on to their culture and their identity. Their daughter however has entered into rarified American society via scholarships. But after graduation, Casey sees the reality of having expensive habits without the means to sustain them.
Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician
From the author of Big Fish comes this haunting, tender story that weaves a tragic secret, a mysterious meeting with the Devil, and a family of charming circus freaks recounting the extraordinary adventures of their friend Henry Walker, the Negro Magician.
Crooked Little Vein
A burned–out private detective is enlisted by an army of presidential goons to retrieve the U.S. Constitution...the real one. Following in the steps of Neil Gaiman, <em>Crooked Little Vein</em> is packed with action, adventure, and a wild cast of characters that are sure to appease not only hardcore comic fans, but a whole new slew of mystery readers waiting for a surprisingly surreal treat that infuses the madness of the graphic–novel world.
Body Surfing
At the age of 29, Sydney has already been once divorced and once widowed. Trying to regain her footing once again, she has answered an ad to tutor the teenage daughter of a wellto- do couple as they spend a sultry summer in their oceanfront New Hampshire cottage. But when the Edwards' two grown sons, Ben and Jeff, arrive at the beach house, Sydney finds herself caught up in a destructive web of old tensions and bitter divisions.
Queen of Broken Hearts
Clare is a widow whose husband died in what may have been a hunting accident. Her step-daughter, Haley, is married with two children when her marriage goes asunder. Two men love Clare. Rye Ballenger is a sophisticated Southerner and cousin to her late husband. Lex Yarbrough has just moved down from Maine and been divorced by his harridan of a wife who then wants him back so Clare cannot have him. Clare's best friend Dory is married to Son who thinks he "owns" the town by birthright...
Traveler
In Traveler, his beautifully written follow up to The Memory of Running, Ron McLarty has created a character who returns home to an awakened sense of responsibility after a note arrives telling him of the death of his first love...
Women on the Edge of a Nervous Breakthrough
Women on the Edge of a Nervous Breakthrough is feel-good chick-lit at the top of its game. Isabel Sharpe's latest novel is a story about three women on the verge of self-discovery. It begins when Vivian Harcourt moves into the sleepy town of Kettle, Wisconsin, the home of her late grandmother. Known to the world as the glamorous Lorelai Taylor and having recently been acquitted of her boyfriend's murder, Vivian moves back to Kettle to escape the media.
The Book of Dave
When cabdriver Dave Rudman's wife deserts him for another man, taking their only child with her, Dave pens a gripping text—part memoir, part deranged philosophical treatise, and part handbook of "the Knowledge" learned by all London cab drivers. Five hundred years later, the Book of Dave is discovered by the inhabitants on the island of Ham, where it becomes a sacred text of biblical proportion, and its author is revered as a mighty prophet.
Once in a Promised Land
Once in a Promised Land is the story of a couple, Jassim and Salwa, who left the deserts of their native Jordan for those of Arizona, each chasing their own dreams of opportunity and freedom. Although the two live far from Ground Zero, they cannot escape the nationwide fallout from 9/11. Jassim, a hydrologist, believes passionately in his mission to keep the water tables from dropping and make water accessible to all people, his work threatened by an FBI witch hunt for domestic terrorists...
Against the Day
Thomas Pynchon is known for the brilliant and complex novels that he wrote in the 1960's and 70's: V, The Crying of Lot 49, and Gravity's Rainbow. Pynchon devotees have waited a long time for the author's sixth novel, Against the Day, and want to know - is it brilliant, or just complex?
Only Revolutions
Mark Danielewski's experimental novel, Only Revolutions surrounds a 200 year road journey taken by two teenage lovers, Hailey and Sam. It is narrated by each of these characters, and readers are instructed to flip the book over every 8 pages to switch viewpoints. This sort of experimentalist literature is not new to Danielewski whose experimental horror novel, House of Leaves became a cult favorite and is now dissected in literature classrooms at Universities the world over.
Kafka on the Shore
In "Kafka on the Shore," Haruki Murakami delivers a tour de force of metaphysical reality, powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom.
Paint it Black
Janet Fitch, well known for her 1999 bestselling novel, White Oleander (an Oprah's Book Club pick) is back with her third novel, Paint it Black, about a self-destructive teen runaway as in the 1980's L.A. punk music scene, struggling and searching for answers after her enigmatic Harvard dropout boyfriend commits suicide.
Anansi Boys
"Fat Charlie" Nancy is perpetually embarrassed by his father, a dapper old man who talks to everyone, loves karaoke, and plays practical jokes on everyone-including Fat Charlie. After the elder Mr. Nancy's funeral, Charlie discovers two things: his father was Anansi, the story-telling, spider trickster god; and Charlie was not an only child.
Cloud Atlas
From the Chatham Isles in 1850 to 1931 Belgium, from the West Coast in the 1970s to present-day England, and from a Korean superstate of the near future to a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii, David Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas" ricochets it's way through time, space, and literary genres and characters in an extremely compelling "puzzle book" novel. Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas" was a finalist for the 2004 Man Booker Prize and a nominee for the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Awards.
Black Swan Green
Black Swan Green inverts the telescopic vision of Cloud Atlas to track a single year in what is, for 13-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982. But the 13 chapters create an exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy. Pointed, funny, profound, left field, elegiac, and painted with the stuff of life, Black Swan Green is David Mitchell's subtlest yet most accessible achievement to date.
Freddy and Fredericka
Freddy is the Prince of Wales, Fredericka his troublesome wife. An overeducated, bumbling anachronism, Freddy commits one gaffe after another, for which he is massacred daily in the press. Fredericka, frivolous and empty headed, is particularly fond of wearing spectacular clothing with revealing necklines. Because of the public relations disasters caused by these heirs to the throne, they are sent, in a little-known ancient tradition, on a quest to colonize a strange and barbarous land: America.
Until I Find You
"According to his mother, Jack Burns was an actor before he was an actor, but Jack's most vivid memories of childhood were those moments when he felt compelled to hold his mother's hand. He wasn't acting then." So begins John Irving's eleventh novel, Until I Find You — the story of the actor Jack Burns. His mother, Alice, is a Toronto tattoo artist; his father, William, a church organist who is addicted to being tattooed.
Jpod
Ethan Jarlewski and five co-workers are bureaucratically marooned in JPod, a no-escape architectural limbo on the fringes of a massive Vancouver video game design company. The six JPodders wage daily battle against the demands of a boneheaded marketing staff, who daily torture employees with idiotic changes to already idiotic games. Meanwhile, Ethan's personal life is shaped by phenomena as disparate as Hollywood, marijuana grow-ops, people-smuggling, ballroom dancing, and the rise of China.
Londonstani
Gautam Malkani's extraordinary comic novel portrays the lives of young Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu men in the ethnically charged enclave of one of the biggest western cities, London. A world usually-but wrongly-portrayed as the breeding ground for Islamic militants is, in actuality, a world of money (sometimes), flash cars (usually), cell phones (all the time), rap music and MTV, as well as rivalries and feuds, and the small-time crooks who exploit them.