Some unsolicited thoughts and opinions from a mother and daughter who love reading and talking about books!

I was drawn to Black Cake because it seemed everyone, everywhere was reading this debut novel.  The story begins with Byron and Bennie, brother and sister, who have been estranged for years, but who are thrust together to hear their mother Eleanor’s lawyer read them her will and last requests. 

Originally published in 1937 and recognized as one of the most important novels in American Black literature, I somehow never read this gorgeous novel. I think all of my daughters read it in high school – and I can see why. 

It’s always thrilling when I hear that Barbara Kingsolver has written a new book.  She has authored some of the best books I’ve read over the past several years: The Poisonwood Bible; Unsheltered; Flight Behavior; and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle to name a few.  In Demon Copperhead, Kingsolver reimagines Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield and sets her story in modern-day Appalachia.  Her protagonist, like Dickens’, is left to navigate a society where children are powerless, unseen and must fight for survival.

Grey Bees is a novel that I would likely never have found without a recommendation from one of my favorite people: Diana Harding. Although it is written by an internationally known Ukrainian author and translated by an award-winning translator, Ukrainian fiction has not until now been on my reading radar. I’m thrilled to be able to alert all of you to this quiet, heartfelt, gorgeous book.

Previously mentioned as a must-read by my mom in her review of Bennett’s The Vanishing Half (read review here), I am here to chime in with an enthusiastic full review of this engrossing and heart-wrenching book. Set in southern California, Bennett uses the older women of a local church, “the mothers,” as a kind of Greek chorus to narrate throughout the story and tease out the secrets that are slowly revealed.

Elizabeth Strout’s gorgeous new novel Lucy by the Sea brings back her iconic characters Lucy Barton and her ex-husband William who we first met in My Name Is Lucy Barton and then saw again in Oh, William! (read review here) Lucy and William have been amicably divorced for a while and as Lucy by the Sea begins, William, who is a biologist, convinces Lucy to leave her New York City apartment and join him at a rented Victorian house in a small town in Maine

In The Sentence, Louise Erdrich has written another compelling novel, this time about a Native American woman named Tookie, who is working in an independent bookstore in Minneapolis after being released from a long prison sentence.