read Archives

Nestlings

Motherhood and Mayhem Author: Nat Cassidy Anna and Reid are a young couple with a new baby and a traumatic backstory. Their fertility struggles have rendered them emotionally raw, and Charlie’s birth has left formerly athletic Anna consigned to a wheelchair with dark feelings of resentment. The sudden news that they’ve won a luxury apartment by Central Park in the exclusive Deptford building should signal a change in their luck. But something nags at Anna. Perhaps it’s the building’s unearthly silence, the grinning elevator operators, the twisting stairwells, the gargoyles that seem to move, that strange substance on the windows, and [...]

Frances Carden2024-08-04T17:00:24-07:00August 4th, 2024|Tags: horror, read, reading|

Empire of Dirt, The

Lyrical, Literary, Loathsome, and Lifeless Author: Francesca Manfredi Valentia lives in the “blind house,” in rural Italy, growing up with her religious grandmother and her disenchanted, flighty mother. The house is said to be cursed; the women abnormal. The townsfolk stay away, and as her period approaches and she grows from childhood into womanhood, Valentia suspects that the walls weeping blood, the plagues of locust and frogs, and the men who cannot remain are all somehow tied to her. Has the curse come alive again through her emerging womanhood? The Empire of Dirt is ostensibly a coming-of-age novel, told through the [...]

Frances Carden2024-08-03T21:12:25-07:00August 3rd, 2024|Tags: book review, magical realism, read, reading|

Forsyte Saga, The

Love Affairs, Betrayal, and Divorce Author: John Galsworthy The Forsyte Saga is an introspective journey through three generations of a newly wealthy family as they find their way in the Victorian world, seeking happiness in everything from properties to torrid love affairs. The Forsytes were farmers and are decided members of the new “rich.” As such, they are obsessed by the trappings of wealth and proving themselves worthy through ownership and propriety. As the generations follow, one after another, they learn from those before them while also repeating many of the same errors, seeking to own where they should instead accept the [...]

Frances Carden2024-08-03T12:42:43-07:00August 3rd, 2024|Tags: book review, classic, Forsyte, read, reading|