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I wish I could grant this novel a five-star rating. Though spoiled by vulgar language and an explicit sex scene, Sounds Like Crazy is one of the most original and well-executed novels I’ve ever read. Holly Miller, a thirty-year-old waitress, shares her life with The Committee, five inner personalities born…

Structurally, Far from the Madding Crowd is about a fickle young Englishwoman trying to do two things for which she is unqualified: run a farm and juggle suitors. Bathsheba Everdeen, a poor but beautiful maiden, inherits her uncle’s farm shortly after refusing a marriage proposal from Gabriel Oaks, a good-hearted…

A cat bite is the through-line for this novel of despair about a childless middle-aged couple who feel the world crumbling around them. Otto and Sophie Bentwood live in a declining section of Brooklyn Heights. Otto has just dissolved his law partnership with Charlie Russel due largely to personality differences.…

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…