Archive for February, 2011

THE GIRL WHO FELL FROM THE SKY by Heidi W. Durrow

It amazes me that THE GIRL WHO FELL FROM THE SKY is Heidi W. Durrow’s debut novel. It is poetic, poignant, beautiful and elegiac with the panache of a seasoned writer. Once I started it, I could not stop thinking about it. It haunted my days until I finished it. Durrow has a talent that is rare and brilliant, like the northern lights.

February 11, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , , , ,  Â· Posted in: 2011 Favorites, Bellwether, Class - Race - Gender, Coming-of-Age, Contemporary, Debut Novel, Family Matters, US Midwest, US Northwest, y Award Winning Author

BEING POLITE TO HITLER by Robb Foreman Dew

These thoughts hover in the mind of the protagonist of this uneventful but satisfying novel-memoir, Agnes Scofield, a once-feisty widowed schoolteacher living in a community of intricately enlaced relatives and friends. The year is 1953; the place a small town in mid-Ohio called Washburn. Everybody seems to know everybody else, but nobody is immune from the fallout of events in the outside world.

February 10, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: ,  Â· Posted in: Character Driven, Contemporary, Facing History, Family Matters, US Midwest, y Award Winning Author

MR. CHARTWELL by Rebecca Hunt

To paraphrase Elvis Presley, depression “ain’t nothing but a hound dog.” In an audacious conceit, Ms. Hunt imagines the depression that hounded Winston Churchill his entire life as exactly that – “unmistakably a dog, a mammoth muscular dog about six foot seven high” whose short black fur is “dense and water-resistant, his broad face split by a vulgar mouth.”

February 9, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Posted in: Contemporary, Debut Novel, Unique Narrative

OPEN CITY by Teju Cole

When Julius, a young psychiatrist living in New York, looks out of his apartment window, he loves to watch the birds fly past. And when he occasionally spots geese flying in formation, he wonders how our life below would look like to them. This same external perspective—which one could argue immigrants master especially well—permeates Teju Cole’s debut novel, OPEN CITY.

February 8, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: Contemporary, Debut Novel, Literary, New York City

THE TERROR OF LIVING by Urban Waite

A provocative thriller will fasten a reader to the proverbial edge of the seat, either by laying a trail of clues to “whodunit” or leading us on a mad and oscillating cat-and-mouse chase through the landscape of the novel. In the case of Urban Waite’s contemporary, reflective and rousing cat-and-mouse debut, I was glued to the pages of perilous pursuit and quickened by the torn and haunted rogue heroes–Deputy Bobby Drake, and ex-convict and owner of a struggling horse farm, Phil Hunt.

February 7, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Posted in: Debut Novel, Mystery/Suspense, Noir, Thriller/Spy/Caper, US Northwest, Wild West

THE SHERLOCKIAN by Graham Moore

THE SHERLOCKIAN, by Graham Moore, is required reading for fans of Doyle’s master of ratiocination, Sherlock Holmes. Moore has a fine time going back and forth between his two protagonists. One is Doyle himself who, in 1893, was growing heartily sick of Holmes. The sleuth in the deerstalker hat had become a celebrity in his own right and had overshadowed his thirty-three year old creator. Why should Doyle despise a fictional character that brought him so much fame and fortune? One problem was that many of Holmes’s admirers believed that Holmes was real, and they were driving Doyle crazy with their letters and requests for help in solving petty crimes. Most outrageous of all, says Doyle, “My greater work is ignored.”

February 6, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , , ,  Â· Posted in: Facing History, Mystery/Suspense