Reviews by Judy

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A Trick of the Light
A Trick of the Light: Armand Gamache Series #7
by Louise Penny
A new Chief Inspector Gamache book: always intriguing (7/6/2011)
I love a good mystery, and Louise Penny’s A Touch of the Light has everything I look for in a good mystery. (1) Wonderful writing. (2) Characters, both major and minor, who have depth, quirks, and their own element of mystery. For example, a recurring character in these …more
A Good Hard Look
A Good Hard Look: A Novel
by Ann Napolitano
This wonderful book does Flannery O'Connor proud (3/31/2011)
I wanted to read this book because the real-life Flannery O’Connor is a main character. And, yes, her character alone grabbed my attention when I started reading, but the more I read the more I could not put the book down. We are privy to the internal lives of no less than …more
The Girl in the Green Raincoat
The Girl in the Green Raincoat: A Novel
by Laura Lippman
Don't underestimate The Girl in the Green Raincoat or Laura Lippman (11/19/2010)
Laura Lippman’s The Girl in the Green Raincoat is great fun…and it’s short! This is another in the Tess Monaghan series, a couple of which I’ve read and enjoyed. The book’s main antecedent is Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window—Tess is laid up, forbidden to move because of …more
Romancing Miss Bronte
Romancing Miss Bronte: A Novel
by Juliet Gael
Quietly good book (3/30/2010)
I liked this quiet well written book. But whether I had liked this book or not, I could not NOT have read it. Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are in the top few of my list of treasured books! The “Miss Bronte” of this title is Charlotte. The “Romancing” of the title is …more
The Things That Keep Us Here
The Things That Keep Us Here: A Novel
by Carla Buckley
Scary, excellent, compelling (12/22/2009)
I could not put this book down. This is a riveting story of how a broken family living in the Columbus, Ohio, area (where I live, too) try to survive an avian flu epidemic that more than decimates the population worldwide. Could this book be more timely with the current …more
The Lieutenant
The Lieutenant
by Kate Grenville
Beautifully written; based on historical events (9/23/2009)
In the late 1700s, Daniel Rooke, a naive astronomer/scientist with his head and heart set squarely on the stars in the sky, sails as a lieutenant with the first fleet taking English prisoners to colonize New South Wales. Two things happen. A single terrible incident …more
The Air Between Us
The Air Between Us
by Deborah Johnson
Interesting story (2/27/2009)
The Air Between Us takes place in Revere, Mississippi in 1966, a town on the brink of desegregation. The looming prospect of a future with no boundaries between races helps reveal complex and often hidden relationships, and surprising secrets, among the townspeople across …more
Madapple
Madapple
by Christina Meldrum
Non-compelling characters (4/11/2008)
I liked the structure of this book--alternating between (1) a present day murder trial with Aslaug, the main character, as the defendant, and (2) the unfolding story of what really happened leading up to the trial. And I liked the plantlore in the first part of the book …more
Peony in Love
Peony in Love: A Novel
by Lisa See
Fascinating (4/3/2008)
I highly recommend Peony in Love. I love the way Lisa See can portray a long-ago Chinese culture that is firmly grounded in historical fact but brought to vivid life by a compelling story and such engaging characters. I loved this about Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and …more
Resistance
Resistance
by Owen Sheers
Imagining what-if and a poet's eye (2/26/2008)
This book will stay with me for a long time. It's beautifully written and emotionally powerful. Set in a remote and mystically beautiful landscape removed from the immediate physical horrors of war, Sheers reveals the inevitable human pain, loss, and moral lose/lose …more
Kafka on The Shore
Kafka on The Shore
by Haruki Murakami
Magical surrealism (11/2/2007)
I don't know if magical surrealism is a genre but that's what I would call Kafka on the Shore. It is surreal in that things happen in parallel worlds and dream worlds that are just as real or more so than things that happen in the "real" world. Events are fantastic, …more
The Quiet Girl
The Quiet Girl
by Peter Hoeg
Not up to Smilla (10/10/2007)
I loved Smilla’s Sense of Snow and so started reading The Quiet Girl with great anticipation. I gave it 125 pages and had to stop reading. The story so disjointed and the characters so enigmatic and opaque that I lost all interest. The writing itself is bad (writer or …more
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