reviews

A night of mourning... Author:  George Saunders He only made it to age eleven.  Stricken with typhoid fever in early 1862, Willie Lincoln, the older of President Lincoln’s two youngest sons, died in the White House on February 20th, just as the American Civil War was ramping up.  Destroyed by grief, yet engulfed by the commanding duties of an endlessly faltering war campaign, the president would occasionally make late night visits to his son’s resting place in Oak Hill Cemetery in nearby Georgetown.  Inspired by these real life events, acclaimed American author George Saunders has penned his first novel, Lincoln [...]

  The Beauty of Youthful Destruction Author: Julie Buntin Somewhere caught between hope and the tantalizing promises of destruction, two broken teenage girls meet and fall into a friendship cast between idolism and subconscious jealousy. Cat is the new girl in a bankrupt and dreary Michigan town where the slush of dirty snow and toxin thick rain sloughs the dismal days into one long pointless stream. Cat is here with her newly divorced and already alcoholic mother, her brother, and the ghost like memories of an absentee father off living with his young new wife.  Being the good student, the [...]

“What imperfect carriers of love we are, and what imperfect givers.” Author: Rachel Khong In Goodbye, Vitamin, her outstanding debut novel, Rachel Khong provides a crisp and affecting look at how early-onset Alzheimer’s can reshuffle the members of a family. Thirty-year-old Ruth Young, who has just been dumped by her fiancé, moves back to Southern California to help her parents, who are knee-deep in their own hot mess. Ruth’s mother is scarily preoccupied with tending to a certain unspoken grief, while Howard, Ruth’s father, sinks into dementia. It becomes clear that Ruth is expected to act as Howard’s primary caregiver. [...]