Jane reviews a few books that were recently published and that she has enjoyed.
BOOK REVIEW: The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson – January 2023
A work of tremendous scope and ambition, this novel dares to imagine what it would take to protect the entire world from environmental collapse.
BOOK REVIEW: LUCY BY THE SEA by Elizabeth Strout – December 2022
In Lucy by the Sea, the sequel to Oh, William (reviewed here last year), Strout has once again adopted a plain, down-to-earth manner. The speaker sounds neither highly educated nor very articulate, but comes across as an ordinary person with no claim to being special. If anything, the tone is more flat-footed than ever. But the enterprise is not pedestrian.
BOOK REVIEW: The Library Book by Susan Orlean – October 2022
Think you’re not interested libraries? So did I. But as soon as I began to read The Library Book, that changed. It holds one’s interest in a way few books do. The writing is so good the subject is almost irrelevant. The author knows exactly when to leave a topic and broach a new one, how to pique your curiosity about something not even remotely interesting on the surface, and how to hold your attention fast, minute by minute. Everything she touches comes alive.
BOOK REVIEW: The Year of Living Danishly by Helen Russell – September 2022
When her husband asked Helen Russell if she’d like to move to Denmark for a year—he’d been offered his dream job there by LEGO—she wasn’t sure.
BOOK REVIEW: THE CANDY HOUSE by Jennifer Egan; SEA OF TRANQUILITY by Emily St. John Mandel – August 2022
Jane reviews two books “The Candy House and by Jennifer Egan and Sea of Tranquility by Emil St. John Mandel”