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Reviews by Mark O. (Wenatchee, WA)

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The Travelling Cat Chronicles
The Travelling Cat Chronicles
by Hiro Arikawa, Philip Gabriel
A Book for Your Travel Kit (5/29/2018)
The Travelling Cat Chronicles is of the small genre of in-the-mind-of-an-animal fiction: dogs, rabbits, or (in this book) a cat (Nana). Nana's human (Satoru) and Nana embark on a road trip across Japan, the past and the future bumping into each other at their stopovers. …more
The House of Broken Angels
The House of Broken Angels
by Luis Alberto Urrea
Family history as a mosaic (3/2/2018)
The House of Broken Angels is the story of a multi-generational Mexican-American family, straddling the border in both time and space. History is gradually revealed by flashbacks. I struggle with nonlinear narratives. I re-started my reading a short way into the book so …more
Eternal Life
Eternal Life
by Dara Horn
A contender for your short shelf. (12/6/2017)
If you are a collector of wonderful sentences you might want to read Eternal Life, by Dara Horn, with a highlighter or notebook in hand. Much of the book is an immersion -- sights, sounds, smells, textures -- in first-century Jewish communities. This deep backstory is …more
Extraordinary Adventures
Extraordinary Adventures
by Daniel Wallace
An Extraordinarily Good Reading Adventure (2/26/2017)
It's no surprise that Daniel Wallace, author of Extraordinary Adventures, is the director of a creative writing program. This is a book to practice reading like a writer. The characters are painted in layers. Subplots weave as graceful as a pod of dolphins. Particularly, …more
Mercies in Disguise
Mercies in Disguise: A Story of Hope, a Family's Genetic Destiny, and the Science That Rescued Them
by Gina Kolata
Fate and Courage (11/15/2016)
The best creative nonfiction books have the same elements as good fiction: memorable characters, a story arc that builds tension, deep backstory. This book is a balanced portfolio of science, history, and biography, assembled by a skilled writer. Gina Kolata's Mercies in …more
The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko
The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko
by Scott Stambach
Hard Times in Belarus (7/21/2016)
I found The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko a hard book to read. It has the social outrage of Dickens and the brooding introspection of Dostoevsky. But the characters are unforgettable. And the book is a reminder that humans are the most adaptable of animals. And in the gray …more
The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper
The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper
by Phaedra Patrick
The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper: an all-ages book (4/17/2016)
The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper is a satisfying hybrid – an archeology of a life and a coming-of-age story. Arthur Pepper, in the infancy of old age, tracks along his late wife's backstory, following the clues of her tucked-away charm bracelet. Most coming-of-age …more
Home by Nightfall
Home by Nightfall: A Charles Lenox Mystery
by Charles Finch
An Upper-class Mystery (9/10/2015)
"Home by Nightfall" seems more akin to historical fiction than mystery; the murder seems accessory to the story. This is the Victorian England of Sherlock Holmes. But the sleuth-protagonist , Charles Lenox, is a member of the gentry and the detecting is more teamwork and …more
Still Life Las Vegas
Still Life Las Vegas
by James Sie
Time and space do funny things in Las Vegas (5/28/2015)
James Sie's "Still Life Las Vegas" seems like a collage. There are short chapters that click back and forth in time (but are helpfully labeled with who, where, and when). Interposed, there are occasional journal pages, illustrated by Walter, the main point-of-view character. …more
The Rabbit Back Literature Society
The Rabbit Back Literature Society
by Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen
Where do writers get their ideas? (11/18/2014)
The Rabbit Back Literature Society is like reading a slightly disturbing dream. Upon waking, there are some ingenious notions to capture in the bedside notebook but enough grotesqueries to hope for a nicer dream next time.

The main characters are each an archeology project, …more
Under the Wide and Starry Sky
Under the Wide and Starry Sky
by Nancy Horan
RLS and Fanny: home is the sailor, home from sea (12/4/2013)
"Under the Wide and Starry Sky" is a novelized biography of Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Osbourne. RLS, plagued by chronic lung disease and Fanny, fleeing a disloyal husband and death of a child, find each other in France, opposites attracted like a proton …more
To the Moon and Timbuktu
To the Moon and Timbuktu: A Trek through the Heart of Africa
by Nina Sovich
To The Moon & Timbuktu (6/23/2013)
Alberto Manguel, in "A Reading Diary" discusses Kenneth Grahame's "Wind in the Willows": "Grahame wisely divides adventurers into adventurers who like their adventures orderly and those who prefer the thrill of chaos." Nina Sovich is clearly of the latter: "Out there [ …more
Palisades Park
Palisades Park
by Alan Brennert
Palisades Park: a high dive into a family (3/11/2013)
Palisades Park is the history you wish you had, for your family. The timeline stretches 50 years, from the early 1920s to the early 1970s, encompassing wars (two), desegregation (slowly), and crime (organized). The Stopka family is an extended example of John Lennon's "Life …more
Bone River
Bone River
by Megan Chance
Bone River (Megan Chance) (12/1/2012)
Bone River will be hard to contain, leaping fences from one genre to another. Is it historical fiction? paranormal romance? a novel of ideas? The setting is late frontier on the Pacific Northwest coast, Native American cultures giving way to small settlements. The main cast …more
The White Forest
The White Forest: A Novel
by Adam McOmber
A dark and otherworldly Dickens (8/11/2012)
I’ve wondered why Victorian England seems such a natural setting for fictional explorations of the darker and less traveled parts of our minds. The “White Forest” is a strong addition to this tradition, with the welcome haunts: old manor house on the moors, slums of London, …more
Beneath the Shadows
Beneath the Shadows
by Sara Foster
“Beneath the Shadows” - moor secrets than a spectral hound (5/15/2012)
All of the hoped-for geography of the English moors is here: windswept, desolate with a raw beauty, the ghostly ambiance of ruins. But the game afoot isn’t a spectral hound. The lurking danger is a web of inbred secrets, the kind that arise in isolation (it takes a village). …more
Until the Next Time
Until the Next Time: A Novel
by Kevin Fox
Time out of Memory (3/4/2012)
Transporting books are safe passages to hard places. “Until the Next Time” takes us deep into the Troubles of Northern Ireland, where history is a congenital disorder, something to be lived with and overcome. But where there is hate, there seems always to be love. “Until …more
The Night Circus
The Night Circus: A Novel
by Erin Morgenstern
The congealed imagination of The Night Circus (7/23/2011)
After reading The Night Circus, I too would like to be a member of the rêveurs, the society of ardent followers, tracking the circus on its unscheduled itinerary. Entering the circus is like falling asleep into someone else’s dream, a dream full of wonders but sustained at …more
Jamrach's Menagerie
Jamrach's Menagerie: A Novel
by Carol Birch
Surviving Life (2/21/2011)
Jamrach’s Menagerie is a legitimate heir of Dickens. Jaffee Brown, a young boy, is growing up in a squalid part of Victorian London, where children have early-onset adulthood. The weird luck of being carried about in the jaws of an escaped tiger leads to a job at the exotic …more
The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise
The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise: A Novel
by Julia Stuart
Lost and Found (8/22/2010)
All readers know that reading takes us places we’d never likely visit. "The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise" takes us inside the Tower of London, a place so saturated with history that ghosts ooze out everywhere. The arrival of a menagerie of animals (gifts to Queen …more
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