Novels

  • Novels

    Herland

    How would a society composed exclusively of women function? This is the question Charlotte Perkins Gilman takes up in Herland (1915), a tale about three male adventurers who go exploring (and are held…

  • Fiction,  Novels

    1984

    At last, I finished it. What impulse compelled me to pick up this book from the Walmart shelf and purchase it? The bargain price of $5.97? The fact that I graduated from high…

  • Novels

    The Memory of Old Jack

    Andy is aware as always that he approaches a past much older than his own, that he cannot remember. But it is a past that, listening to Old Jack’s and his grandparents’ talk,…

  • Novels

    That Hideous Strength

    The Hideous Strength holds all this Earth in its fist to squeeze as it wishes. But for their one mistake, there would be no hope left. If of their own evil will they…

  • Novels

    A narrative of twin urban centers

    There: an awkward retitling of a classic. That’s about all that can be said about A Tale of Two Citiesthat hasn’t already been said. I missed this one, even though it’s apparently the most…

  • Novels

    America America

    My favorite English teacher gave me a copy of Ethan Canin’s Emperor of the Air[1988] when it first came out. Certain details from those short stories have stayed in my mind for years: the…

  • Novels

    Never Let Me Go

    I’m a big fan of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day. I saw the movie first, then read the book. When I found Never Let Me Go on the library shelf, I…

  • Novels

    The Red Castle Women

    As a matter of curiosity, I requested this book through interlibrary loan back in the fall. It was one that I’d read and reread as an eighth grader after the school librarian recommended…

  • Novels

    Certain Women

    Sometimes I like books without any idea why. Madeleine L’Engle’s Certain Women is about an actress who returns to attend to her dying father, a stage actor who reviews his life through the…