BookBrowse | Book Reviews and Recommendations

Reviews by Jill S. (Chicago, IL)

The Dream Hotel: A Novel
by Laila Lalami

Well-Plotted, Urgent, and Absolutely Riveting (12/23/2024)

Imagine this: you're a working mother of young twins, and as you teeter on exhaustion, you turn to the latest technological breakthrough. It's called Dreamcatcher, a simple implant that stores your dreams, allowing you to gain a few hours of restful sleep and wake up …more

The Adversary: A Novel
by Michael Crummey

Power dynamics gone awry: dark, quirky and excellent (12/19/2023)

If you've ever read Michael Crummey's novels, you know you can expect a few things: a dark, ambiance-rich Newfoundland setting, quirky and superbly crafted characters, and stunningly written prose. In The Adversary, he outdoes himself. This is his best book yet.

Set in a …more

Leaving: A Novel
by Roxana Robinson

What do love, marriage, and parenthood demand? (11/20/2023)

"Being I a marriage is like walking a tightrope. You can't lose confidence. You have to keep going. You can't look down."

But what happens when you lose your footing and do look down? Can you survive or must you surrender to the emptiness?

Warren, who has been married to his …more wife Janet for 37 years, has lost his footing. The two of them share mutual respect, but they have markedly different views of the world. Then he unexpectedly runs into Sarah, his college sweetheart, at the opera. She is now divorced from the man she left Warren for so many years ago. They rekindle what they once had. But of course, life is now far more complicated. Both have adult children, and Warren is married.

That is the set-up for Leaving, and it is the launching pad for many questions that center around love, marriage, and parenthood. Is love – much like in operatic tragedies – a constant struggle between passion and honor? Are there ever moral grounds for leaving a marriage? What do we owe our children and others who love us? Is personal joy more important than being present and nurturing for those who carry our genetic code and will carry it into the future? Should adult children ever have the right to "own" their parents' lives or to emotionally blackmail them?

This is a nuanced book, and in reading it, my own questions arose. According to scientists, we are naturally programmed to enjoy about two years of constant sexual highs before settling down to a calmer, more mature love that can still be punctuated by passion. I wondered: what is it about Sarah that attracted him so deeply? She left him for the flimsiest of reasons. And his need to exit his marriage seems built on relatively flimsy reasons as well. What makes them think now they are natural soulmates? At 60 years old, are Warren and Sarah racing the clock to capture the kind of transcendental love that has been denied to them?

I struggled with my rating because the answers are not clear. But I gradually decided that maybe that's the point: there are no easy answers or instant understandings. This is the kind of novel that captured my attention and left me wanting to talk about it with others. I give it a 4.5 star rating and thank BookBrowse and W.W. Norton for the opportunity to read it early in exchange for an honest review. (less)

This Other Eden: A Novel
by Paul Harding

Inspired by an appalling part of Maine's history (1/8/2023)

Some of the most wrenching novels are based on fact, and so it is here: this novel is inspired by rhe forced resettlement of a mixed-race population of a small island community in Maine at the start of the 20th century.

Teeming with biblical undertones, such as the story of …more

Scatterlings: A Novel
by Resoketswe Martha Manenzhe

A Lyrical Novel That Breaks Its Spell (10/5/2022)

I anticipated that Scatterlings would be primarily about the ramifications of the South African Immortality Act, passed in 1927, which deemed it a crime for Europeans (whites) and natives (blacks) to engage in intimate relations.

Indeed, this is how the novel starts out: …more

The Family Izquierdo: A Novel
by Rubén Degollado

Linked Stories About A Family Bound by Love (7/26/2022)

Families, it is said, are like branches on a tree. They grow in different directions, yet their roots remain as one.

Meet the Izquierdo family. With my smattering of college Spanish, I know that izquierdo means from the left or left-handed. Who knew that it also meant "you …more

The Immortal King Rao: A Novel
by Vauhini Vara

Memories will endure (3/30/2022)

There was something déjà vu in reading The Immortal King Rao not long after finishing Jennifer Egan's Candy House. Both books, at their core, are about brilliant tech entrepreneurs who invent ways to gain access to every memory ever had.

Egan's version is a new technology …more

Dirt Creek: A Novel
by Hayley Scrivenor

Page-Turning: We Are All Dirt Town Children (3/4/2022)

You've read it before – a small town that hides big secrets that burst to the surface when a young person goes missing or is slain. Two books that instantly come to mind are The Dry by Jane Harper and Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips.

Haley Scrivenor is not seeking to …more

The Family Chao: A Novel
by Lan Samantha Chang

A modern-day Brothers Karamazov (11/7/2021)

What an amazing reimagining of the Brothers Karamazov! Even though the brothers in question here are the three sons of Leo Chao, "the consummate American id, an insatiable narcissist, a shameless capitalist who wanted to screw everyone", the framework of the classic Russian …more

New York, My Village: A Novel
by Uwem Akpan

Bed bugs as a metaphor for prevalent racism (8/10/2021)

There are several key strands to explore in this ambitious, shattering, unforgettable, sprawling and ultimately uneven novel. Two of the most prominent are the prevalence of racism in an educated publishing house and in New York in general and racist assumptions about …more

Big Girl, Small Town
by Michelle Gallen

A nuanced character study (10/11/2020)

Big Girl, Small Town laser-focuses on the stout and underachieving character Majella O'Neill—cruelly called Jelly – who lives in the small village of Aghybogey during the Irish Troubles.

Each chapter begins with the time of day and an item from a list of things she doesn't …more

Hieroglyphics
by Jill McCorkle

A deeply layered look into what defines a life (6/2/2020)

After a certain age, you begin to realize that life isn't a neat and linear progression of memories, but rather a series of disjointed artifacts, rituals, and language that make that life take shape. Digging a little deeper, you understand something else: that often, the …more

American Dirt: A Novel
by Jeanine Cummins

It will change how you think about the world (11/13/2019)

How do I even begin to do justice to a book that is so brilliantly-written, harrowing, poignant, thought-provoking, strongly-plotted and heart-stopping?

Perhaps with this: American Dirt is one of those rare books that will not only galvanize readers with its story and with …more

Travelers: A Novel
by Helon Habila

The tales and humanity of refugees (4/28/2019)

Travelers is about the stories and secrets that African refugees and asylum seekers carry, the colorful past that helps answer the question, "Where am I? Who am I? How did I get here?" It's about how we remain human when a loss of identity and sense of dislocation begin …more

The Lost Man
by Jane Harper

Character-driven and atmospheric (11/6/2018)

The Lost Man is one of those books that starts with a simmer and then ignites and becomes unputdownable. Jane Harper makes ample use of dialog to illuminate her characters -- two brothers who meet up at a fence line after their middle brother is found dead. Little by little, …more

Clock Dance: A Novel
by Anne Tyler

Quintessential Anne Tyler - a treat for her fans (7/5/2018)

If I had to choose an author to write my own life story, it would be Anne Tyler. She suffuses her quirky characters with so much compassion and understanding that they come alive on the page.

In Clock Dance, familiar themes emerge: the woman who must leave home to find …more

The House of Broken Angels
by Luis Alberto Urrea

About our better angels: another winner by Urrea (2/6/2018)

Luis Alberto Urrea's latest book is about our better angels and how the guide us to purpose and meaning. "All we do, mija," the oldest brother, Big Angel, says, "is love. Love is the answer. Nothing stops it. Not borders. Not death."

Miguel Angel de la Cruz - aka Big Angel - …more

The Heart's Invisible Furies: A Novel
by John Boyne

A tragic, funny look into being gay in an evolving Ireland (6/14/2017)

John Boyne dedicates this sprawling novel to John Irving and that, in my opinion, is no accident. John Irving's works are characterized by two key themes: the absent parent who looms large in his/her offspring's life, and the role of predetermination merged with coincidence. …more

If We Were Villains
by M. L. Rio

Gives New Meaning To The Words "Literary Thriller" (3/9/2017)

This novel is clever in the way that Donna Tartt's The Secret History is clever -- expertly layered, gradually revealing its secrets. Take that book, merge it with the Bard, and you have a thriller that takes "literary" to a new level.

When a group of budding Shakespeare …more

The Barrowfields
by Phillip Lewis

Wonderful writing but overly ambitious (2/5/2017)

The Barrowfields is a wonderfully promising debut novel that loses its way by trying to be too ambitious.

At first, I was entranced by Philip Lewis' majestic and evocative prose, which reads as if it could have easily been penned in the 1940s. Henry Aster, our narrator, …more

BookBrowse Book Club

The Husbands
by Holly Gramazio

The Husbands delights in asking: how do we navigate life, love, and choice in a world of never-ending options?

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Becoming Madam Secretary
by Stephanie Dray

New York Times bestselling author Stephanie Dray returns with a captivating novel about an American heroine France Perkins—now in paperback!

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The Jackal's Mistress
by Chris Bohjalian

From the New York Times bestselling author of Hour of the Witch, a Civil War love story of a Confederate wife and a wounded Yankee.

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A Map to Paradise
by Susan Meissner

From the USA Today bestselling author of Only the Beautiful. 1956, Malibu, California: Something is not right on Paradise Circle.

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