Romantic Parvenu

Book Review: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

April 18, 2015

I’m honestly lost as to what all the fuss was about. I wouldn’t go so far as to say Station Eleven was terrible, but it certainly doesn’t strike me as any different than the massive influx of post-apocalyptic fiction that’s saturated the market ...

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Book Review: The Wives of Los Alamos by TaraShea Nesbit

April 18, 2015

At the heart of TaraShea Nesbit’s The Wives of Los Alamos is a sense of community, of solidarity. It’s about women who are forced together by situation and who forge bonds in spite of their differences. It’s about women dealing with everyday ...

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Book Review: Native Speaker by Chang-rae Lee

April 17, 2015

I just think the author’s prose is simply wonderful. There is a lyricism, and also a uniqueness, to his turns of phrase that are distinctly his own. Lee’s syntax is occasionally just a little bit different from what we consider “standard ...

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Book Review: My Sunshine Away by M.O. Walsh

April 16, 2015

M.O. Walsh’s debut is at once a southern mystery and an intimate coming of age story, told by an unnamed narrator whose conversational tone gives the book movement and poignance. Because, though My Sunshine Away is about the rape of a ...

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Book Review: Flowers from the Storm by Laura Kinsale

April 12, 2015

Flowers from the Storm was good but not outstanding. I think it’s absolutely deserving of its recognition among the romance reading community—Kinsale breaks molds and really stretches what people think of when they think of genre romance. More ...

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Book Review: Sweetland by Michael Crummey

April 11, 2015

Michael Crummey’s Sweetland was a difficult novel for me, not because I didn’t like it or because I had serious issues with it, but because I felt more ambiguous about it than anything else. I lean towards liking it overall, but I really can’t ...

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