Tag Archives: Picador
The Hours by Michael Cunningham
It has been a while since I read Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, and I’m hazy on its details (+ my copy is back in Sri Lanka), so I don’t think I fully appreciated Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer winning novel which pays homage to Woolf. The Hours (which, by the way, was Woolf’s working title for her […]
The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson: The Renegade
This is not a story for animal lovers, especially if you have a pet dog! The Renegade‘s protagonist Mrs. Walpole and her family are fairly new to their small-town, having just moved from the city. Mrs. Walpole hasn’t adopted to country life yet – she depends on her neighbors’ advice for things that she could […]
The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson: The Witch
This story sent shivers down my spine! In The Witch, we have a young mother riding the train with Johnny, her four-year-old son and baby daughter. The mother, probably tired (or lazy), isn’t particularly interested in the observations her son makes along the way – every time Jonny says something, the mother gives him half-hearted […]
The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson: My Life with R. H. Macy
Next up in The Lottery and Other Stories is My Life with R. H. Macy, the first short story Shirley Jackson ever published. Having worked as a clerk at Macy’s before moving to Vermont, Jackson full well knows the drudgery that is involved in working in retail – the bigger the department store you work […]
The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson: The Villager
The protagonist of this short story, Hilda Clarence, had first arrived in Greenwich Village when she was twenty-three from a small town in upstate New York. Back then, Hilda’s dream had been to become a dancer one day. To support herself in pursuing her dream, she had taken up a job as a stenographer in […]
The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson: Trial by Combat
Emily Johnson, the protagonist of Trial by Combat, is an army wife who hasn’t been living in her New York apartment for long when she realizes that some of her inexpensive trinkets go missing while she is at work. It’s not hard for Emily to figure out who the kleptomaniac is – after all, there’s […]
The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson: The Daemon Lover
In The Daemon Lover, the story’s unnamed narrator is getting ready for her wedding day in haste. At thirty-four, she’s past the marriageable age (as per societal conventions in the 1940s), so she is psyched to finally tie the knot, although it feels like she hasn’t known her young fiancé, James Harris (Jamie), for all […]
The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson: The Intoxicated
New year = time to pick up a new short story collection. 😀 I’ve previously read two stories by Shirley Jackson (The Lottery and Like Mother Used to Make), and I loved them both. Both those stories were disturbing – which is not usually my jam – but her style and subtlety somehow worked for […]
A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood
In this slim novel set in the 1960s, what we have is a day in the life of George Falconer. George, 58, is a transplant from England residing in sunny California. Over a year ago, when Jim, George’s partner of 16 years, suddenly passed away, it had left George’s life in shambles. This being the […]
My Time Among the Whites: Notes from an Unfinished Education by Jennine Capo Crucet
In My Time Among the Whites, Jennine, through a series of autobiographical essays, dissects what it means to be a first-generation minority college student and the excitement and confusion that came with it, not just for her, but her family as well, while also exploring other topics. From the moment I read about Jennine’s trip […]
Certain American States: Stories by Catherine Lacey
Similar to Kimberly King Parsons’s Black Light, Catherine Lacey’s stories in Certain American States feature lost, broken individuals who are in various states of mind. These people are at turning points in their lives going through loss – be it the loss of a loved one, or merely a sense of lack of direction in their lives. So […]
Number One Chinese Restaurant by Lillian Li
While I was curious to read Number One Chinese Restaurant written by a fellow Ann Arborite, it is a book I approached with some amount of apprehension. Out of the books that were long-listed for Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019, this is one book that received the least amount of love by bloggers who got […]
Theory of Shadows by Paolo Maurensig
I was an enthusiastic chess player back when I was in high school. Those days I was living and breathing chess, and although it has been a while since I last played chess, I was thrilled to get my hands on Theory of Shadows, a novel based on Alexander Alekhine who became the World Chess […]
Grist Mill Road by Christopher J. Yates
One fateful day in August 1982, somewhere out in the woods in Upstate New York, Patch witnessed his best friend Matthew shooting Hannah with a BB gun forty-nine times. They were all seventh graders attending the same school, but this had been the first time a girl joined in the boys’ excursions – before that, […]
Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong
Rachel Khong’s debut novel Goodbye, Vitamin tells the story of the thirty-year-old Ruth who is back at her parents’ home after avoiding them for ages. Ruth’s father, a well-known history professor, is suffering from Alzheimer’s, and upon her mother’s request, Ruth decides to stay with them for a year to help take care of her […]
