Joy, the main character and first person narrator of this comedic romance mystery, set in the fictional town of Spavinaw Junction, Oklahoma, is accused of trying to hang herself when she falls from the roof of the old Talley house where she has lived all of her life. Joy is […]
Four and one-half stars for this reflective and spiritually didactic fable. This book is a lesson in valuing time. Through the lessons each of the main characters—Sarah Lemon, a lovelorn teenager; Victor Delamonte, a wealthy and fatally ill man in his eighties; and their instructor Dor (Father Time)—learns, the reader […]
This is literary fiction complete with conflict, plot, rising action, crisis, climax, falling action, etc. Set in Olympia, Washington, in the Pacific Northwest, the main character and first person narrator is fourteen-year-old March Peter Wong, a brilliant, teenager whose favorite activity is climbing trees. March, the name by which he […]
Five stars for this well written premier novel of forbidden love between an Arab and a Jew. Lila was a Jew born and raised in Istanbul. Later an adult, she moved to Jerusalem. Elias Riani was an Arab, whose family has lived in Jerusalem for over a hundred years. In 1947 Elias […]
Published in 1982, A Bloodsmoor Romance by Joyce Carol Oates is a gothic romance novel set in Bloodsmoor, Pennsylvania, in the years 1879-1899. It is the story of five Pennsylvania sisters, told by an omniscient narrator identified only as “a maiden lady of advanced years.” The novel opens with considerable […]
Five stars for this novel that in spite of its being written before To Kill a Mockingbird, is its sequel. My research tells me that when Harper Lee submitted this her first book for publication, she was turned down and told to write a novel about a younger protagonist, thus […]
