I admit it: the first feeling that I had when I saw Laila Lalami's novel was relief, relief that it was obviously shorter than so many of the novels I wanted to read so quickly as part of the Orange Prize longlist reading I wanted to do. Not very propitious,
My first Angela Carter read was The Magic Toyshop. Somewhere I'd gotten the idea that I would like this novel without any real understanding of its author, so I was surprised by just how magical that toyshop really was, but I recognized something about Angela Carter that led me to
Paule Marshall's Brown Girl Brownstones VMC No. 87 (1959) Without knowing anything of it, I chose Paule Marshall's novel Brown Girl, Brownstones to read with Black History Month in mind (along with Hannah Crafts' The Bondwoman's Narrative and Zora Neale Hurston's Jonah's Gourd Vine). It was kind of a random
It's still early, the winter morning that I begin reading Hetty Dorval, and the train is leaving the station hesitatingly, in the dark and snowless cold. I have my other book in my lap, my fun read, the sort of read that will be perfectly absorbing even after the bulk
