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The frustration a reader encounters with The Trial is a key to understanding what makes it a great novel. It is a series of absurdities reflecting the very nature of human institutions. Joseph K., a prominent bank official, awakens one morning to find himself under arrest. He doesn’t know what he’s…

“No one will love you more or be meaner to you than your kids,” says a character in Landslide, Susan Conley’s moving novel about a woman struggling to raise two teenage boys. Jillian Archer, a fisherman’s wife and documentary filmmaker, chronicles her daily battles with Sam and Charlie as her…

What drives Under the Net is the clever way Iris Murdoch uses elements of a mystery novel to develop her theme. Jake Donaghue, the narrator, is content with his role as a mediocre writer and book translator until forced to vacate his London flat. His search for new lodgings takes…

Combining poetic narration, endearing characters and folksy dialogue, Marianne Wiggins paints a beautiful marriage portrait in Evidence of Things Unseen. Ray Foster, an amateur scientist and survivor of mustard gas poisoning in France, falls in love with Opal Fiske, daughter of a North Carolina glass blower, while visiting Kitty Hawk to…

Novelists are cranking out apocalyptic sagas like link sausages these days. So it’s refreshing to find one that rises above hackneyed formulas to create a parable of faith and perseverance. Author Robert Repino ventures beyond George Orwell’s Animal Farm into new territory. Sebastian, soon to be renamed Mort(e), is content…

Let me admit up front that I could not have understood this novel without the introduction written by Orlando Figes that appears in the translation I purchased. Let me also suggest that if you decide to read The Master and Margarita that you read the introduction last. It’s much more…

I often review books from bygone eras because I admire the standards that make them classics. Recently, I’ve had the pleasure of discovering Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, from 1943. Modern authors can learn a great deal about writing from this book. Though its situation is commonplace – a…

Medicus is a leisurely and entertaining novel that imagines what a doctor’s life might have been like in Roman-occupied Britain. Gaius Petreius Ruso, newly stationed with the Roman legion in Deva, is confronted with the body of a murdered girl on the same day that he takes pity on a…

Peter Straub died September 4, 2022 at age 79. For Halloween last year, I published my review of Ghost Story, my all-time favorite Straub novel. I am republishing it today for those who may have missed it. Like other horror stories, Ghost Story is couched in a claustrophobic environment of dread, suspense and terror.…

Last year I did a brief review of this book for Goodreads. Sensing that I didn’t do it justice, I decided to read it again. Intended in 1911 as a caricature of Edwardian aristocracy, Zuleika Dobson serves today as a parable of people’s blind devotion to false idols, especially self-centered…