Month: May 2006
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What Happened to Lani Garver by Carol Plum-UcciHarcourt, 2002
This story of small-town narrow-mindedness is unsettling, upsetting, but also well worth reading. Growth & progress & learning to be real.
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The Voyage Out by Virginia WoolfBarnes & Noble Classics, 2004 (originally the Duckworth Press, 1915)
Woolf’s first novel is full of luminous detail, perfect descriptin: a boat moving along a river, a thunderstorm, the way night falls or morning breaks. Familiar themes of aloneness, the inadequacy of language, the difficulty of communication: but here that’s all combined with the disconnect between the sexes, which makes this book feel frustratingly dated…
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Lucy Rose, Here’s the Thing About Me by Katy KellyDelacorte (Random House), 2004
When eight-year-old Lucy Rose’s parents separate, she and her mom move to Washington D.C., where her grandparents live. What follows is a pretty standard story, told in the form of diary entries, of getting used to a new place, making friends, and having child-sized adventures. Lucy Rose is smart, and her voice is really endearing,…
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Affinity by Sarah WatersRiverhead Books. 2002 (originally Virago, 1999)
Perfectly faux-Victorian, the twists & turns of the mind & of prison corridors, allusive and delicious and dark. A story told in the form of diary entries, secrets and private thoughts.
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How I Live Now by Meg RosoffRandom House, 2004
Intense & amazing; one of those books I liked too much to say anything intelligent about.