reviews

A Beautiful Kind of Ugly Author: Darcey Steinke The topic of Jesus Saves is damnation – the desiccation of forgotten suburban sprawl receding into a backwash of strip-mall lots isolated save for swirling eddies of garbage and the forgotten, disillusioned young. In this landscape, the fates of two girls collide. Ginger, the rebellious teenage daughter of a beleaguered minister and Sandy Patrick, a young child, kidnapped and tortured by an unnamed molester. As Sandy’s torture and abuse leads her further into an imaginary world of double-edge meaning and ironic animal characters, Ginger follows the case of the missing girl as though [...]

Decades of deception... Author:  Javier Cercas How do you tell a true story?  When push comes to shove, how do you decide what the truth is?  Especially when you’re writing about a compulsive liar.  This is the dilemma Spanish novelist Javier Cercas faces when he reluctantly decides to tell the true story of Enric Marco.  It’s aptly titled The Imposter and it’s an entirely captivating dive into the often nebulous gap between truth and fiction. He was one of Spain’s most popular and esteemed heroes.  Following the country’s transition from fascism to democracy in the late 1970s, Enric Marco gradually [...]

Trunks, branches and twigs, oh my!! Author:  David Quammen It’s been the metaphor that all the other metaphors wish they could be.  When describing life on earth, the tree has been the visual of choice, ever since Darwin.  Humbly and simply symbolizing life’s connections with countless trunks, branches and twigs, it’s truly awe-inspiring in its scope.  But nothing is ever as simple as it seems and in The Tangled Tree, acclaimed science journalist David Quammen reveals the many ways that this most hallowed of biological metaphors has fallen victim to modern science.  It’s really an incredible read. Quammen uses the [...]