What’s the point of having a voice if you’re gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn’t be? When 16-year-old Starr Carter is the only witness to her best friend’s death at the hands of a police officer, it’s up to her to stay silent or decide against it. The…
Vanity has always been my poorest quality. I hate it in myself, and yet am as plagued with it as I am with needing to sleep or eat or breathe. The most noticeable thing when going into Vladimir by Julia May Jonas is its cover. The titular and attractive Vladimir, a…
I’ve had Boy Parts by Eliza Clark on my to-read shelf for a while now, but I never actually got around to tackling it. But readers know all too well that sometimes we need escape from the romance and fantasy through blunt contemporary works. And how else through the lenses…
I won’t tell you whether it has a happy ending or a tragic ending…neither you nor I nor anyone can ever really know whether a story is happy or tragic. There is a melancholy that permeates through this entire book. It toes the line between alienation and friendship, hope and…
A generational family history told by the narrator, born as intersex and raised as Calliope later turned Cal, Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex is a rare, unconventional gem of fiction. The family saga is rich and full of drama. It ran seamlessly when the book picked up its pace, despite its inconsistency…
“Sometimes we want what we want, even if we know it’s going to kill us.” It is when you read pieces like Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch that you realize that modern literature has failed us. A lot of the books that we are accustomed to fail to leave lasting impressions. Most of…
“The normal world has no room for exceptions and always quietly eliminates foreign objects. Anyone who is lacking is disposed of. So that’s why I need to be cured. Unless I’m cured, normal people will expurgate me.” Convenience Store Woman is one of the books whose titles reflect the contents of…
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh is the epitome of no plot, just vibes. Unlikeable characters, an unreliable narrator, and a bizarre, dark type of humor—this book has it all. It’s year 2000, set in the wealthy enclaves of Chicago. Hilarious and sad at the same time, the…
It is an impressive feat to be able to write an unconventional, let alone an unexplored, type of love story as Audrey Niffenegger does in The Time Traveler’s Wife. While the plotline is intricately woven, the premise is simple: Henry DeTamble has a “Chrono-Displacement Disorder”, a genetic condition that causes him…
I looked up because of the laughter, and kept looking because of the girls. Emma Cline, The Girls It is 1969, and 14-year-old Evie Boyd is thrust into a cult-like group of girls. Evie, being the child of recently divorced parents and scurrying for acceptance from her peers, finds herself…