Briar Patch Books

Tag: literary fiction

  • A North Carolina novel you won’t want to miss

    Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson INDIGO FIELD. By Marjorie Hudson. Regal House Publishing. 410 pages. $22.95. Marjorie Hudson’s debut novel is so beautifully written, so powerful, so true and so haunting that it’s hard to come up with one adjective sufficient to describe it. Suffice it to say that if you’re making a list of […]

  • Up to the challenge

    Reviewed by Paul T. O’Connor CLOUD CUCKOO LAND. By Anthony Doerr. Scribner. 622 pages. $30, hardcover. In his latest novel, Anthony Doerr has challenged himself with a monumental task: Establish three distinct storylines, set apart from each other by more than 700 years, two continents and millions of miles of outer space, and then draw […]

  • Anchored in the dilemma

    Bob Moyer, an avid reader, often goes through books at a rapid pace. But those tend to be mysteries. This novel, he says, forced him to slow down. Reviewed by Robert P. Moyer JACK. By Marilynne Robinson. Farrah Straus Giroux. 309 pages. $27. Marilynne Robinson has produced three novels centered on the fictional village of […]

  • Sons and mothers and Jackie O.

    Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson THE EDITOR. By Steven Rowley. Penguin Audio. Read by Michael Lee. 10 ½ hours. 9 CDs. $40. Also available in print from G. P. Putnam’s Sons. What an original and wonderful idea for a book: James Smale is a struggling would-be writer in New York City in the early 1990s, […]

  • The courage to love

    Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson WE MUST BE BRAVE. By Frances Liardet. Penguin Audio. Read by Jayne Entwistle and Juliet Mills. 16 hours; 13 CDs. $66. Also available in print from G. P. Putnam’s Sons. This beautiful, moving novel is the first to be published in America by Frances Liardet, a British writer and translator, […]

  • Quiet and powerful

    Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON. By Elizabeth Strout. Random House Audio. Read by Kimberly Farr. Four CDs; four hours. $30. Also available in print from Random House. Elizabeth Strout’s books are so different from anything else I read, indeed, from most of today’s fiction as far as I can tell, […]

  • Sunshine and shadows

    Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson Memory is such a complicated thing. It’s always fascinating to compare memories with a sibling or other person with whom you shared a long-ago experience. Sometimes details will be radically different; sometimes one person may have no recollection at all of something that made a vivid, lasting impression on another. […]

  • Love, marriage and so much more

    Bob Moyer takes a look at a novel that’s small in size but big in scope. Reviewed by Robert P. Moyer DEPT. OF SPECULATION. By Jenny Offill. Alfred A. Knopf. 177 pages. $22.95. This concise, evocative novel (readable in one sitting) takes the reader on a roller coaster ride through that treacherous theme park known […]

  • Disaster, public and private

    If you haven’t discovered the books of Chris Bohjalian, you need to. I first encountered his work in Secrets of Eden (December, 2009), which impressed me a great deal. Since then, I’ve been equally impressed by The Sandcastle Girls and The Light in the Ruins  (both of which are reviewed here). The man has written […]

  • Aesthetics vs. pragmatism – what really matters?

    Bob Moyer is back, taking a thoughtful look at a novel that depicts the travails of Germans and others caught up in the horrors of the cataclysm that was World War II. By Robert Moyer THE LIFE OF OBJECTS. By Susanna Moore. Alfred A. Knopf. 240 pages. $25. Beatrice, a bright young Irish girl, yearns […]