As an only child, my fascination with large families in fiction stretches back to the Marches, the Moffats and the All-of-a-Kinds. More recently, Jennifer Close's The Smart One and Jami Attenberg's The Middlesteins catapulted me into chaotic family-soaked gatherings (the latter was one of my favourite reads in 2013). Grand Central Publishing, Hachette Book Group,
Alfrida's apartment is crowded. “'I know I’ve got far too much stuff in here,' she said. 'But it’s my parents’ stuff. It’s family furnishings, and I couldn’t let them go.' The story about her parents, the loss of her mother, the other family with whom she visits only half-heartedly after
It's possible that the readers who will warm most fervently to The Wondrous Woo are those readers who feel a connection with a passage like this: Inanna Publications, 2013 "The first episode had come after an incident at the Woolco cafeteria when I was ten. It was $1.44
For Today I Am a Boy is a very ordinary story, told in a gentle and quiet voice. Kim Fu's novel does not challenge vehemently, like Ghalib Islam's brash debut or Helen Oyeyemi's Boy, Snow, Bird. "My father stood on the step and watched with me. It was the fall
Desmond has returned to the island because the prime minister has asked those who went abroad to help rebuild the nation, now that it has gained its independence. Harper Collins Publishers, 2014 Cecil Foster's experience is not unlike Desmond's, but Independence is rooted in the story of a
