Book Quote: “Did it really happen?” I ask. Her smile fades, her lips pressed and thin. “Oh, it happened,” she says, her voice low and alive. “Don’t let anyone tell you it didn’t. It was, it remains, genocide.” The word spills from her mouth. Book Review: Review by Jill I. Shtulman (SEP 2, 2010) With the one hundredth anniversary of the Armenian deportations only a few years away, author Mark Mustian has set himself a daunting... 

Book Quote: “The difference between a fact and a secret was the slithery phrase: ‘Don’t tell anyone.’ ” Book Review: Review by Poornima Apte (SEP 1, 2010) Early on in Monique Truong’s powerful new novel, Bitter in the Mouth , the narrator, Linda Hammerick, realizes her family is keeping secrets from her. “What I know about you, little girl, would break you in two. Those were the last words that…  Read More →

Book Quote: “Still on the subject of greed,” he said, “a sort of degradation of literary morality is under way. It could well be that your project, in itself, simply by the light it will cast on the arena of literature, will show how pathetic this drift is. What I’m referring to is the way that authors, nowadays, live for rivalry, going so far, I am told, as to write with the sole purpose of …  Read More →

Book Quote: “How do you survive the end of time? It is quite simple. By the time the universe is old enough and frail enough to collapse, humans will be able to do whatever they like with it…By then it’ll just be a case of wheeling one decrepit planet to one side of the universe while another one pisses itself sadly in another galaxy. And all this while waiting for the final crunch, as everything becomes everything else as... 

Book Quote: “Her son had been killed, that was all she would say.  Killed. Nothing about how his laughter started somehow above his head, high and tinkly.  How he called sweets ‘breadie-breadie.’  How he grasped her neck tight when she held him. How her husband said that he would be an artist because he didn’t try to build with his LEGO blocks but instead he arranged them, side by side, alternating colors. They did... 

Book Quote: “I sat at my bedroom window after I changed; the cashew tree was so close I could reach out and pluck a leaf if it were not for the silver-coloured crisscross of mosquito netting. The bell-shaped yellow fruits hung lazily, drawing buzzing bees that bumped against my window’s netting.” Book Review: Review by Vesna McMaster (AUG 18, 2010) From the first few pages this novel leaves no room for doubt as to how the narrative will... 

Book Quote: “Everybody has some kind of scar, and I have already explained how I have come to have mine. Lines drawn across my face divide my horizons–mark the end of my childhood and the beginning of another phase–these fractions of my life blur together if I am honest now. ” Book Review: Review by Betsey Van Horn (AUG 27, 2010) This is a short but pungent tale about crime, betrayal, passion, love, and a scar–both... 

Book Quote: “Let’s say you had an opportunity to get your work in front of more people than you ever thought you’d reach, a chance to get more money than you thought you could ever get, but you had to compromise everything you thought you believed in. Would you do it?” Book Review: Review by Poornima Apte (AUG 26, 2010) Struggling writer and coffee barista, Ian Minot, is frustrated and depressed. For one thing, he just can’t... 

Book Quote: “Later, thinking back on the way my father recounted the story, it occurred to me that much of the language he used to describe the storm might have been applied to the act of a couple making love. He made the sound of the wind for me, then, and I pressed myself against his chest so he could wrap his big arms around me. I shivered, just to think how it must have been that night. For some reason, my father liked to tell this... 

Book Quote: “During the day Three Stations was in constant motion, a Circus Maximus with cars…. Drunks were everywhere, but hard to see because they were as gray as the pavement they sprawled on. They were bandaged or bloody or on crutches like casualties of war…. At Three Stations the crippled, outcast and usually hidden member of society gathered like the Court…  Read More →

Book Quote: “He asked me to keep everything,” Sandra said. George wasn’t listening. “Do you see this? A paper clip!” The silver wire clipped several scraps of paper to a recipe for petites meringues a l’ananas. George pulled it off, and showed Sandra the rusty impression left behind. “This is criminal.” Book Review: Review by Lynn Harnett (AUG 21, 2010) One of Goodman’s favorite authors is Jane Austen and it shows in her subtle,... 

Book Quote: “Dr. Amnesty’s cartridges, the South African Museum, Harold’s fossils, Chefe Carpenter’s collection, Alma’s memory wall – weren’t they all ways of trying to defy erasure? What is memory anyway? How can it be such a frail, perishable thing?” Book Review: Review by Jill I. Shtulman (AUG 20, 2010) Aldous Huxley once famously said, “Every man’s memory is his private literature.”... 

Book Quote: “Don’t we all assume we’ll do it differently, not repeat the past? We believe with all out hearts that we can rise above the things [our parents] couldn’t. Sometimes, our beliefs blind us.” Book Review: Review by Roger Brunyate (AUG 19, 2010) At first I thought this book was not for me as a male reviewer, for its focus is so much upon its central female character and her roles as daughter, wife, and... 

Book Quote: “Later he would tell her that their story began at the Royal Hungarian Opera House, the night before he left for Paris on the Western Europe Express. The year was 1937; the month was September, the evening unseasonably cold. His brother had insisted on taking him to the opera as a parting gift.” Book Review: Review by Roger Brunyate (AUG 19, 2010) The publisher of this blockbuster book speaks of its “Tolstoyesque... 

Book Quote: “I was particularly anxious to get together with Jeeves and hear what he had to say about the strange experience through which I had just passed, as strange an e. as had come my way in what you might call a month of Sundays.” Book Review: Reviewed by Poornima Apte (AUG 18, 2010) For me, P. G. Wodehouse and eighth grade totally belong together. I spent…  Read More →