Briar Patch Books

Tag: literary fiction

  • Being human in a tempestuous world

    Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson THE MARRIAGE BED. By Tommy Hays. Blair/Carolina Wren Press. 300 pages. $27.95. On what starts out seeming like a typical Tuesday evening, Asa Flowers drives home from his job teaching poetry at a small college in Asheville, N.C. The car radio tells him storm clouds will be heading that way…

  • A road trip into an insightful novel

    Bob Moyer reviews a new novel that he believes is an “instant classic.” Reviewed by Robert P. Moyer THE REST OF OUR LIVES. By Ben Markovits. Simon & Schuster. 240 pages. $28. John Steinbeck, Robert Pirsig, Jack Kerouac—and Ben Markovits, all authors of classic road trip books. The first three authors are well-known, of course,…

  • The dancing woman speaks to us all

    Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson DANCING WOMAN. By Elaine Neill Orr. Blair/Carolina Wren Press. 291 pages. $28.95, hardcover. Elaine Neill Orr is a gifted writer whose works are inspired and enriched by her creative temperament and her unusual perspective on the world. In her third novel, Dancing Woman, she is perhaps at the height of…

  • A look through different eyes

    Every now and then, my husband, Lloyd, reads a book that impresses him so much that he volunteers to write a review for my blog. This is one of those rare finds. Reviewed by Lloyd Brinson JAMES: A Novel. By Percival Everett. Doubleday. 303 pages. $28, Often, after reading a really good book – fiction…

  • A fitting sendoff

    If you missed this book when it was published in 2016, or over the years since, you may join Bob Moyer as he savors Richard Russo’s last, skillful look at his memorable literary creation, Donald “Sully” Sullivan of North Bath. Reviewed by Robert P. Moyer EVERYBOODY’S FOOL. By Richard Russo. Alfred A. Knopf. 451 pages.$29.…

  • When the well runs dry…

    Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson WESTERN ALLIANCES. By Wilton Barnhardt. St. Martin’s Press. 400 pages. $29, hardcover. Wilton Barnhardt must have had a blast writing this latest novel. What fun, imagining (and researching?!) the travels of Roberto Costa, a spoiled, rich (inherited), overgrown kid-adult who’s never held a job and much prefers Europe to his…

  • 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,…