Category: FICTION

April 29, 2010

I am the Messenger by Markus Zuzak * (of 4)

Feh. Zuzak’s means well. An Australian teenage no-goodnik performs saintly deeds for friends, acquaintances, and strangers transforming himself from a messenger of love to the...

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April 29, 2010

The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh *** (of 4)

An American-born ecologist of Indian immigrants travels to the Sunderbans to study the Irriwaddy Dolphin. She joins three additional main characters — a translator, an...

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April 29, 2010

The Human Stain by Phillip Roth **** (of 4)

One of the best pieces of literature I’ve ever read with multiple layers about an African American who disguises himself as a Jew becomes a...

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April 29, 2010

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie ** (of 4)

I was so disappointed. The book is billed as the great retelling of the Igbo battle for their independent state of Biafra separate from the...

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April 29, 2010

The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton *** (of 4)

In one of Crichton’s earliest books, he retells the adventure of professional, upper crust burglar who spends a year and a half masterminding the heist...

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April 29, 2010

Good Scent from Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler

Short stories on Vietnam and Vietnamese living in Texas. I read about half the stories. They were good, but they were all short stories. It...

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April 29, 2010

The Finer Points of Weiner Dogs by Alexander McCall Smith *** (of 4)

A German professor of philology with a specialty in irregular Portuguese verbs is mistaken at an academic conference for a veterinarian with a similar name...

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April 29, 2010

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry **** (of 4)

The title refers to the fine balance between hope and despair for four Indians surviving emergency rule, poverty, and the caste system in India ruthless...

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April 29, 2010

The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat ** (of 4)

The dismal lives of Haitian peasants working for insensitive Dominicans goes from bad to worse in this depressing story that feels like an early Danticat...

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April 29, 2010