Book Reviews and a Little More…
The Guineveres is the story of 4 girls named Guinevere who befriend each other after each being left at a convent to live until they are 18. It is wartime (though we don’t know which war, exactly), and after a failed escape attempt, they are assigned to taking care of young, comatose soldiers in the convent’s sick ward. For the girls, these soldiers aren’t a
Read more
I’ve wrestled with my feelings about this book, and I think I’ve fallen solidly on the side of “meh”. I struggled to get through it, but kept going because I was interested in the prison drama of it all. I can appreciate the literary quality of the writing, but the story structure left something to be desired. Sometimes things are linear, sometimes we’re jumping around
Read more
This short story collection is the first of Sittenfeld’s work I’ve read, and I found it both interesting and easy to read. As a collection, these stories are about women in relationships — short and long, past and present, perceived and actual — but never neat and tidy. Overall the tone is quite cynical, but I didn’t mind that. A couple of the stories revolve
Read more
This was a good read, but definitely not a quick or easy one. We’re introduced to Joe, a young man living his young, carefree life, tending bar in an ocean-side town in the Pacific Northwest. Then he meets Tess, who seems to be his missing puzzle piece. Together they fall into an easy summer rhythm, working, playing, loving. A rhythm that is only interrupted by
Read more