reviews

Little House in the Wild West Author: Laura Ingalls Wilder Transiting from eking out a hard existence farming the blighted prairie, Pa Ingalls is prepared to leave the snug house on Plum Creek for a new adventure further west, this time as a temporary railroad man. Recovering from a family wide bought of fever which has shockingly cost Mary her sight, Ma is hardly willing to tear the girls away from a good town with a school and a church, but difficult financial times once again sets the family on the wilderness trail, leaving another happy yet failed home behind. [...]

How do we tell our own stories of destruction? Author: Elizabeth Strout  The enticing Book of the Month video review praising the sparing elegance of poetic language and the depth of emotion between an estranged mother and daughter, reconnecting over illness, caused me to thrust aside my growing stack of “to-be reads” and instead start straight into My Name is Lucy Barton. Despite the tenderness that BoTM highlights in their review, the unembellished novel is more about brokenness and grief over childhood abuse and how these memories and this despair both defines us and ultimately dooms us. The story is a sad one, a [...]

"How does she use you?" Author: Charles Dickens Phillip Pirrip (Pip) is a young orphan boy being viciously “brought up by hand” by an abusive elder sister and her kindly, quiet tempered blacksmith husband, Joe. Pip enters this world with low expectations, the joy of his heart namely being anticipation of adulthood and a quiet apprenticeship with Joe and the steady pounding of the steaming forge. Everything, however, changes when his greedy relations, specifically the hateful Uncle Pumlechook in coordination with Pip’s sister, send him to entertain a wealthy but eccentric old woman and her child protégé, the stunning Estella. [...]