Lowboy, by John Wray: Book Review
An uncomfortable, riveting, beautifully written novel about a schizophrenic teenager named Will, his mother, and the detective looking for Will after he went off his meds and on the lam in the New York City subway system in search of the girl he believes will help him save the world from global warming. I consider myself to be a mildly enlightened person when it comes to mental illness, but I can’t say whether the portrayal of schizophrenia in this book is realistic or fair. What I can say, though, is that it seems realistic and not at all unfair. And it’s disturbing. And...
Read MoreBook Review: The Book of Fires, by Jane Borodale
I was skeptical about The Book of Fires. It’s the first non-”women’s fiction” review title I received from Penguin Canada, and my experiences with women’s lit had left a bad taste in my mouth. So although I was promised a great book, I didn’t have the most open mind going into it. The story is about Agnes Trussel, a teenager in the 1750s. Growing up in an impoverished farming family in Sussex, England, she finds herself pregnant. Horrified, naive and ashamed, she runs away to London to save her family the shame and the burden. Alone and fairly helpless in...
Read MoreBook Review: Darwin’s Radio, by Greg Bear
Darwin’s Radio by Greg Bear My rating: 4 of 5 stars Darwin’s Radio might be the most engaging sci-fi book I’ve read in months or possibly years. Although I had to fight my inclination to edit the book as I read (Bear gives lots of extraneous details that hinder rather than help, and has some clunky habits), the story was compelling enough to keep me reading at a rapid clip. In present-day end-of-the-millennium, a massive challenge to the accepted theory of gradual evolution threatens the entire human population’s ability to understand itself. Bear’s managing to...
Read MorePartial Book Review: The Echo Maker, by Richard Powers
The Echo Maker: A Novel by Richard Powers My rating: 1 of 5 stars I couldn’t finish this slow, overly descriptive, not-at-all intriguing, boring novel. It was a book-club pick and only two people finished it, one kicking and screaming. The book is about a man in his mid-20s who’s in a car accident and spends two weeks in a coma. When he wakes up and begins his recovery, he accuses his sister – the two have always been very close – of being an impostor. It’s a disorder called Capgras syndrome, and it’s very rare. The neuroscience and psychology in the book are...
Read MoreBook Review: The Girl Next Door, by Elizabeth Noble
A couple of months ago, Penguin Canada put out a call for bloggers interested in receiving advance copies of upcoming releases. I signed up and a couple of weeks ago received my first two review copies. I might not get through one, but here’s what I think about the other. The Girl Next Door is by Elizabeth Noble, who is a bestselling British author whom I hadn’t heard of before. The novel follows the inhabitants of an apartment building on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The characters for the most part each fit one stereotype or another, which wasn’t blatantly offensive...
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