This novel is so breathtakingly good that I’m afraid my review cannot do justice to it. In less than three hundred pages, Yaa Gyasi escorts us on a desperate journey of personal trauma and disillusionment that only a person of strong character could survive. Gifty is such a person. The…

It’s refreshing to find writers who aren’t afraid to weave their faith into their work. Too many novelists reject God as a factor in their characters’ lives, as though He exists in a separate universe.  In Trial and Error, Robert Whitlow uses the story of a small-town lawyer trying to…

David Guterson takes a long time to reveal where this story is going. At first, I wasn’t sure I wanted to stick with a rambling first-person narrative about two teenagers in the pop music and drug culture of 1970s Seattle. But knowing from two of his other books how well…

In another brilliant coup for historians, Erik Larson combines scholarship with drama to tell the story of how inventor Guglielmo Marconi cemented his success by aiding in the capture of a murder suspect. Between 1894 and 1910 two men, Marconi and physics professor Oliver Lodge, competed for the right to…

You have to admire Dostoevsky’s skill with characters. Reading Crime and Punishment, I found myself more interested in Raskolnikov’s friends and adversaries than in his senseless murder of an old pawnbroker and her sister. Their personalities dominate the story so strongly that at times you almost forget that a crime…

In Barbara Cormyn’s novel, Sophia Fairclough tells her brief life story in a straightforward confessional style that will touch anyone who knows what it’s like to be on the threshold of adulthood. With little family experience of her own, Sophia is eager to leap into marriage with a young artist,…

This novel is so significant that I wish I could talk about it in specific terms. But that would spoil it for uninitiated readers, so I will do the best I can with generalities. On the surface, Never Let Me Go is about children growing up at an English boarding…

Roy Peachey’s novel is a poignant tale of idealism and disillusionment in the landscape of World War I. His central character, Wang Weijun, grows up in a Chinese family of privilege. Despite a childhood accident that destroyed his eye, Wang dreams of traveling to Europe to experience the world of…

I couldn’t help thinking of that old movie Dog Day Afternoon while reading this story. Both deal with hostage situations that take unexpected turns, some of them comical. It is quirks of humanity that make both works memorable. Bel Canto, Ann Patchett’s fourth novel, deals with a formal gathering of…

Erik Larson has become my favorite historian. No matter what subject he chooses – Winston Churchill, the Lusitania, or the Chicago Exposition – he weaves his detailed scholarship into a fascinating narrative. In Isaac’s Storm, Larson takes on not only an historic hurricane, but the science of meteorology and the…