Literary Fiction Book Reviews

In the opening scene of this wonderful debut novel, a southern gothic that is at times comedic, at times heartbreaking, the protagonist, Simpson Weems, considers murdering his brother. We do not learn what Simpson ultimately decides until the end of the book. After the opening scene, the story becomes an extended flashback. Simpson spends the rest of the book dealing with the past, his own past and that of his family—pasts that are, as William Faulkner wrote and Simpson reminds us, never dead, not even past.

LaFlaur certainly pays his respects to Faulkner, and echoes of Flannery O’Connor can be […]

Geoffrey Young’s novel “Fall” is a tempestuous marriage between beautifully crafted prose and a story that leaps time and place to explain exactly why we find our narrator, Paul, a waiter and would-be writer (there is only one letter difference between them, he tells us hopefully) who sits on a fire escape in New York, penning a desperate soliloquy about his fall in life: how did Paul finish up here and why is he so desperate to end it all?

The reader is drawn in immediately by the gorgeous use of language and the compelling description of feelings. We don’t […]

Literary fiction, like poetry, is a quixotic and lovely thing. It’s never been an easy sell because the genre is an anti-genre. It’s “This doesn’t fit into another category, so we’ll call it literary.” In some cases, perhaps many, it means it’s a tough read. In other cases, it just means it doesn’t have a typical dramatic story structure, but there’s structure and much to love.

Only the Impassioned by H.C. Turk is all these things. It’s often beautiful, it’s impassioned, and it’s tough to follow. The story revolves around twenty-two-year-old Andrew Bower, a draftee in Germany at the end […]

As a child, Michael Accordo longs for a balanced diet. As a young man, he seeks to balance mixed signals from his parents, his religion, and his culture in general.

The novel is structured as though we are reading a transcript of reflective conversations recorded in 1987 between an adult Michael and Ambrosia, a close friend. While Ambrosia is a psychiatric professional, she is not officially his therapist. This softens the story a bit so it doesn’t devolve into self-help pseudo-memoir territory.

Michael begins his reflections in the 1950s with a focus on food as it relates to his family […]

Clarity, a quaint, close-knit town, has one major problem – they’re suffering financially. So when Fluid Products comes into their town and promises them fat paychecks and local jobs in spite of the down economy, many citizens are eager to jump right into the deal.

However, there are a couple of citizens not so eager. Deborah, the town’s beloved and intelligent psychologist, speaks against Fluid. She believes that the trade-off for Fluid’s deal could be more harmful than helpful. Why let Fluid bottle and take control of Clarity’s water? Isn’t that too powerful a move? Though mayor Roger Trent wants […]

Ten years after moving to Ireland with her husband, Heather loves her family but realizes she’s at an impasse. As the novel opens we find her in a reflective housework session. While pining for the hills of her native North Carolina, Heather hits upon the idea of organizing a hillwalking group of just three members and her journey is under way.

The two women who answer Heather’s ad are also Americans. Jamie, married with two children, is from Texas and Christy, married with no children yet, is from Virginia. Gradually the three women learn to trust and care for one […]

What a pleasure this book is to read, thrilling without being a thriller, mysterious without being a mystery, of another time without being nostalgic.

We are introduced in this novel to many characters, large, small, and interesting alike, including “The Wooten Bunch” of Water Wells, Alabama, consisting of six students. Most of the focus is on four particular boys in this bunch as they transition from sixth grade in 1954 through the end of high school in 1961. While The Player Piano at times a coming-of-age story, it’s more than that. This is a tale of the very survival of […]