About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Tana French
Rave Shelf Awareness ...two separate and very sad stories are multifaceted, complicated by many unknowns and draw the reader deeper and deeper into the psyches of her characters. This is Tana French at her writerly best.
Chang-rae Lee
Rave The Seattle Times The Surrendered, an ambitious and ineffably sad novel of war and a search for belonging, is the story of three people forever and invincibly damaged by war, all of them ingrown, selfish and emotionally stunted ... These three haunted souls collide in time and place, bringing similar visions of the world with them. They all try out a version of love on each other, which more closely resembles need. The circumstances of the novel are horrific, the people unlovable and, in the end, there is no tidy redemption ... Lee is a masterful storyteller. While it is hard to prioritize his work in terms of good/better/best, this novel stands very high on the list.
Kevin Powers
Rave The Seattle Times The intimacy of Kevin Powers' story uses the now banal horror of war as a backdrop for the poignant story of two boys in way over their heads. In Al Tafar, Iraq, Private Murphy, 18, and Private Bartle, 21, do all they can to protect each other through endless days of fighting the same battle over and over again. Only the names of the dead are changed … In quiet, beautiful prose, Powers has painted an unforgettable portrait of so much that is wrong about the conduct of war and peace for soldiers.
Shirley Hazzard
Rave The Seattle Times The ‘Great Fire’ of the title is World War II. The pain, disruption and loss caused by such a conflagration as a war is explored in the lives of Hazzard's characters: Aldred Leith and, to a lesser extent, Peter Exley. They have survived: changed, wary, solitary. Both men are making tentative steps toward a future as yet unimagined … How to make a life in an uncertain, quixotic and dangerous world? Hazzard knows that world well: its geography, both interior and exterior. The Great Fire is a masterful rendering of the hopes and terrors experienced by those annealed in the fire.
Pascal Mercier, Translated by Barbara Harshav
Positive The Seattle Times This overarching novel has been a huge international best-seller for the past five years, encompassing the lifelong meditations of one man and the ruminations of another in search of himself ...filled not with mere nuggets of wisdom but with a mother lode of insight, introspection and an honest, self-conscious person's illuminations of all the dark corners of his own soul ... The many subplots in Night Train to Lisbon include Gregorius' fascination with languages, ancient and modern, his ramblings through the settings of Amadeu's life, almost like a madman, and his putting together of the pieces of the puzzle that was Amadeu's life ... Mercier has captured a time in history — one of the times — when men must take a stand.
Claire Messud
Rave The Seattle Times In The Emperor's Children, the marvelous third novel by Claire Messud, three friends who met at Brown University as students are all living in Manhattan 10 years after graduation … Claire Messud is a masterful writer of displacement, alienation and loneliness. Her novels are about people who have lost their way, their country, their sense of self, their innocence, their grasp on self-knowledge or their purpose. She writes with wit, intelligence and flawless style of predicaments and people both ordinary and extraordinary, making them sympathetic and believable. Her books are an unalloyed pleasure for the reader.
Elizabeth Strout
Rave The Seattle Times In 13 short stories that form a fully realized novel, we come to know Olive as a cranky, sarcastic, dismissive sourpuss. Make no mistake: This is no crusty heroine with a heart of gold. Olive's heart can be as black as her tongue is tart, but there are times when she'll surprise you with her compassion … Elizabeth Strout has drawn an indelible portrait of a difficult woman whose life is fraught with disappointment, some of it self-inflicted. Despite all, she can penetrate the hearts and souls of others, bringing sweet relief and comfort to those who despair of their own lives.