Chances Are... By Richard Russo

 

Chances Are...

By Richard Russo

 5 stars.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg

Image
  Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg If you're sensitive about racist language in books, this one is not for you. Taking place in Alabama through various points in time from the Depression era into the mid-1980s, Fried Green Tomatoes is rife with the 'n' word. That aside, I enjoyed the book very much. The story follows two story lines that are connected by Mrs. Virginia "Ninny" Threadgoode who, as a young woman, lived in Whistle Stop, Alabama, but comes to reside in a nursing home in Birmingham as an older woman where she meets Evelyn Couch, a sad middle-aged woman who is intent on eating herself into the grave. Evelyn is going through menopause and is dissatisfied with her life, questioning all of her choices and what kind of a person she is and wants to be. She fantasizes about being tougher, more confident. During Evelyn's visits to the Rose Terrace Nursing Home where her husband's mother lives, she encounters Mrs. Threadgood...
Read more

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

Image
  Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer I'm not really a science fiction reader, but I thought I'd give the Southern Reach trilogy a shot. Annihilation is the first book in the series by Jeff VanderMeer. One of the weirdest things about this book, and I think the thing that most inhibited it for me was that there are zero descriptions of what the characters look like and they are not named. As a result, I couldn't get a picture of them in my mind as I was reading. The story vacillates between the present mission of a group of researchers in the abandoned Area X and the main characters past relationship with her husband, who was a part of the previous expedition's team. I liked the bits about the biologist (the main character) and her husband and could have read a whole book about that. But the present parts were pretty boring to me until about the last third of the book, where some interesting stuff happens. I will read the other two books in the triology, Authority and Acc...
Read more

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

Image
  Gilead by Marilynne Robinson What a beautifully written novel. The language in this book is possibly the most tender I have ever read. Reverend John Ames, a 77 year old Congregationalist pastor in the 1950s small fictional town of Gilead, Iowa, is dying and he is leaving behind a memoir to his son who is just seven years old and to his young wife. Ames recounts episodes in his life that have shaped him, especially those involving his father, grandfather, and his good friend Reverand Boughton, whose son Jack returns to Gilead and rekindles the somewhat adversarial relationship he had with Ames (his Godfather, for whom he was named). Ames struggles with his own theological understandings, especially where Jack is concerned, among other things. This book is filled with moments of beauty we should all recognize in everyday life; moments Ames finds awe in and hopes that his son will come to understand and appreciate as he grows. It is a reflective novel on a life lived mostly in solit...
Read more