reviews

Shopgirl: Steve Martin Writes Depressing Romance Philosophy Author: Steve Martin Back to my dwindling supply of hodge-podge books from a long-ago eBay lot, I encountered Steve Martin’s Shopgirl and instantly talked my husband into listening to it. It’s Steve Martin – one of my favorite comedians – and I’d just introduced Trav to Father of the Bride in preparation for our impending nuptials. Shopgirl, however, isn’t what you expect. Starting out with a lilting sarcasm, the drama soon follows the sexual misadventures of Mirabelle, a lonely shop girl who has bounced from one dissatisfying relationship to another and is now seeking solace in a much [...]

An agonizing peek inside an open marriage Author: Sarah Dunn  “Rule Number One: No one can ever know... Rule Number Two: No falling in love… Rule Number Three: Condoms at all times… It should start and then it should stop… When it’s over, it’s over… Six months.” So begins a couple’s raw, spellbinding, and sometimes cringeworthy foray into open marriage. I give a lot of credit to novelist and television writer Sarah Dunn for what she has accomplished with The Arrangement. Her story of Lucy and Owen, married nine years and parents to a little boy, could have veered straight into [...]

  Magical Realism and a Gut-Wrenching Journey Through African American History Author: Colson Whitehead As our book club’s May choice, we talked about the arching complexity of magical realism intermixed with history overlaid by a conversation on racial prejudice. In other words, we picked the hot-off-the-presses Pulitzer Prize winning The Underground Railroad, a book in which the historic agency by which slaves were smuggled out of the confederacy to freedom is an actual, physical subterranean structure that links decades of history along an odyssey like journey. It all begins with Cora, a slave who lives in “The Hob” on a Georgian [...]