Tag Archives: psychological fiction

Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka 

22 Wednesday Feb 2023

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A man is set to be executed for murder, and as he waits out his final hours, we hear from him and the women in his life on how he ended up here. This dark, thought-provoking novel is hard to put down. 

“Kukafka crafts a disturbingly remorseless killer in Packer but infuses the events that draw readers to his final moments with raw empathy and lingering questions about human evil and the destruction left in its wake.”— Booklist (starred review)

“Unshakable, deeply compassionate . . . Kukafka wrings tremendous suspense out of a story that isn’t a whodunit or even strictly a why-dunit, suspense born out of a desire to see these women transcend the identities consigned to them. . . . A contemporary masterpiece that sits alongside The Executioner’s Song and Victim: The Other Side of Murder in the library of crime literature.” — Library Journal (starred review)

“At once blistering with righteous anger and radical empathy, Notes on an Execution is destined to become a contemporary classic.” — Esquire, The Most Anticipated Books of Winter 2022

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Signal fires by Dani Shapiro

11 Wednesday Jan 2023

Posted by in Fiction, United States

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I really enjoyed this book.  217 pages, not a wasted word, original story, characters that you believe in – an unfolding origami puzzle – just as the Booklist review below suggests.

“Acclaimed novelist/memoirist Shapiro (Inheritance) writes with compassion and a deep understanding of the damage that secrets wreak. Shapiro’s first novel in 15 years was well worth the wait.” —Library Journal

“I don’t know of anyone who writes about family with the same generous understanding and gem-cut sentences as Dani Shapiro. Signal Fires confirms her as an artist of the highest order.” —Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story

“Wise, deeply perceptive, suffused with light in spite of life’s darkness—Claire Messud, author of The Woman Upstairs

“Stunning in depth and breadth, this luminous examination of loss and acceptance, furtiveness and reliability, abandonment and friendship ultimately blazes with profound revelations . . . Like creating an intricate origami puzzle, Shapiro folds together the events that define these lives over decades, focusing on specific interludes to divulge old secrets or bury new ones. Returning to fiction after touching readers with her courageous and probing memoirs, including Inheritance, Shapiro delivers keen perceptions about family dynamics via fictional characters that exude a rare combination of substance and delicacy.” —Booklist [starred review]

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The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka

10 Friday Jun 2022

Posted by in 20th century, Fiction, United States

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 You will remember the author’s award winning previous short, spare novels, The Buddha in the Attic and When the Emperor Was Divine.  In the same vein, her latest takes a spare environment as a metaphor for the fading of the mind of a mother and the daughter that visits too late.

“A quick and tender story of a group of swimmers who cope with the disruption of their routines in various ways . . . Otsuka cleverly uses various points of view: the swimmers’ first-person-plural narration effectively draws the reader into their world, while the second person keenly conveys the experiences of Alice’s daughter, who tries to recoup lost time with her mother after Alice loses hold of her memories and moves into a memory care facility. It’s a brilliant and disarming dive into the characters’ inner worlds.” –Publishers Weekly [starred review]

“Award-winning, best-selling Otsuka is averaging one book per decade, making each exquisite title exponentially more precious. Here she creates a stupendous collage of small moments that results in an extraordinary examination of the fragility of quotidian human relationships . . . Once more, Otsuka creates an elegiac, devastating masterpiece.” –Booklist [starred review]

“The Swimmers is a slim brilliant novel about the value and beauty of mundane routines that shape our days and identities; or, maybe it’s a novel about the cracks that, inevitably, will one day appear to undermine our own bodies and minds; and — who knows? — it could also be read as a grand parable about the crack in the world wrought by this pandemic . . . Otsuka’s signature spare style as a writer unexpectedly suits her capacious vision . . . The Swimmers has the verve and playfulness of spoken word poetry.” –Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air/NPR

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The Maidens by Alex Michaelides

15 Monday Nov 2021

Posted by in 20th century, Fiction, murder, murder and investigation

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The Maidens contains some of the key elements that drew readers to The Silent Patient, his first novel.   Greek mythology, therapy, and a psychologist are at the center of this murder mystery. I really liked this second novel even better than his first!

“Fans of The Secret History will fall hard for The Maidens, Michaelides’ dazzling chaser to 2019’s bestselling The Silent Patient, a challenging act to follow…Layered in dreamlike references to Greek mythology and ancient ritualized murders, this clever literary page-turner firmly establishes Michaelides as an unstoppable force in the thriller space.”―Esquire

“Stunning… The intelligent, cerebral plot finds contemporary parallels in Euripides’s tragedies, Jacobean dramas such as The Duchess of Malfi, and Tennyson’s poetry. The devastating ending shows just how little the troubled Mariana knows about the human psyche or herself. Michaelides is on a roll.”―Publishers Weekly, starred review

The Maidens contains some of the key elements that drew readers to The Silent Patient, his first novel.   Greek mythology, therapy, and a psychologist are at the center of this murder mystery. I really liked this second novel even better than his first!

“Fans of The Secret History will fall hard for The Maidens, Michaelides’ dazzling chaser to 2019’s bestselling The Silent Patient, a challenging act to follow…Layered in dreamlike references to Greek mythology and ancient ritualized murders, this clever literary page-turner firmly establishes Michaelides as an unstoppable force in the thriller space.”―Esquire

“Stunning… The intelligent, cerebral plot finds contemporary parallels in Euripides’s tragedies, Jacobean dramas such as The Duchess of Malfi, and Tennyson’s poetry. The devastating ending shows just how little the troubled Mariana knows about the human psyche or herself. Michaelides is on a roll.”―Publishers Weekly, starred review

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The New Husband by D.J. Palmer

13 Saturday Jun 2020

Posted by in Fiction, suspense, thriller

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“What makes Simon Fitch so perfect?

-He knows all her favorite foods, music, and movies.
-Her son adores him. He was there when she needed him most.
-He anticipates her every need.
-He would never betray her like her first husband.

The perfect husband. He checks all the boxes. The question is, why?”  (Amazon)

“Mother doesn’t always know best in this thrill ride of a novel…gripping and twisted.” ―Karin Slaughter, bestselling author of The Good Daughter

“Plenty of twists…will keep you turning the pages as you guess…and guess again.” ―Lisa Scottoline, New York Times bestselling author of After Anna

“An acute, sensitive portrayal of family love under extreme stress…[with] a touch of Hitchcock.” ―William Landay, New York Times bestselling author of Defending Jacob

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The Last One by Alexandra Oliva

03 Tuesday Oct 2017

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A group of contestants are filming a survival reality show when a disease strikes the real world. However, isolated in the wilderness, the contestants have no idea, and believe everything they encounter is part of the TV show. This is a gripping story that is hard to put down.

“The TV show Survivor meets Cormac McCarthy’s The Road in Oliva’s stellar debut. . . Fueled by brilliantly intimate and insightful writing as well as an endearing and fully realized female lead, this apocalyptic novel draws its power from Zoo’s realizations about society and herself as she struggles to survive long enough to somehow make it back to her home.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Part wilderness-survival thriller and part dystopian pandemic story . . . a gripping portrayal of an ordinary person’s evolving survival instincts as she realizes she can’t trust the reality she sees.”—Booklist

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A Separation by Katie Kitamura

05 Monday Jun 2017

Posted by in Fiction, mystery, Travel

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This is a mesmerizing examination of a marriage gone wrong.  They had agreed to separate but he makes her promise to tell no one quite yet.  Then he disappears and his mother convinces her to find him…somewhere in Greece…..I couldn’t relax until I knew the outcome!

“Accomplished… a coolly unsettling work.” —New York Times Book Review

“A spare and stunning portrait of a marital estrangement… [B]uilds into a hypnotic meditation on infidelity and the unknowability of one’s spouse. In precise and muted prose, the entire story unspools in the coolly observant mind of a young woman… A minutely observed novel of infidelity unsettles its characters and readers.” —Kirkus [starred review]

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Nutshell by Ian McEwan

18 Wednesday Jan 2017

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I call it (with tongue in cheek) Hamlet Redux….a funny, engaging tale of murder, intrigue, deceit, and political commentary told (in incredibly graceful prose) from the viewpoint of a nine month old fetus.  McEwan is truly a 21rst century Shakespeare.

“With Nutshell, Ian McEwan has performed an incongruous magic trick … A smart, funny and utterly captivating novel … A small tour de force that showcases all of Mr. McEwan’s narrative gifts of precision, authority and control, plus a new, Tom Stoppard-like delight in the sly gymnastics that words can perform.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“As an example of point of view, you can look no farther than these gorgeous pages, which not only prove that brevity is the soul of wit but also offer the reader a voice both distinctive and engaging … The reader [will be] speeding through every page, each one rife with wordplay, social commentary, hilarity, and suspense … Hats off to Ian McEwan.”—Mameve Medwed, Boston Globe

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The Heart by Maylis de Kerangal ; translated from the French by Sam Taylor

21 Wednesday Sep 2016

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An immediate best seller in France for all of 2014!  And now the gift of an excellent translator has made it possible for us to experience the gorgeous prose and gripping story that takes place over just 24 hours.  After a fatal accident, the heart of 17 year old surfer, Simon Limbres, begins its own journey. The author unflinchingly presents us with the moral questions and the hour by hour complexity of life and death.  It is a memorable read that lingers long after the final page.

“I read The Heart in a single sitting. It is a gripping, deceptively simple tale―a death, a life resurrected―in which you follow along as everyone touched by the events is made to reveal what matters most to them in their lives. I was completely absorbed.” ―Atul Gawande, author of Being Mortal

“I’ve seldom read a more moving book . . . De Kerangal is a master of momentum, to the extent that when the book ends, the reader feels bereft. She shows that narratives around illness and pain can energize the nobler angels of our nature and make for profoundly lovely art. One longs for more.” ―Lydia Kiesling, The Guardian

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The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

14 Monday Dec 2015

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A woman reflects on her life, particularly her relationship with her late sister, who died after driving off a bridge. The novel alternates between past and present, and includes a “novel within a novel” that adds to the mystery surrounding the two sisters’ lives. Margaret Atwood is an acclaimed writer, and this is my favorite of her books that I’ve read.

“Absorbing… expertly rendered… Virtuosic storytelling [is] on display.”–The New York Times

“Brilliant… Opulent… Atwood is a poet…. as well as a contriver of fiction, and scarcely a sentence of her quick, dry yet avid prose fails to do useful work, adding to a picture that becomes enormous.”–John Updike, The New Yorker

“Bewitching… A killer novel…. Atwood’s crisp wit and steely realism are reminiscent of Edith Wharton… A wonderfully complex narrative.”
—The Christian Science Monitor

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