Lemuria Bookstore Blog

If, as one reviewer claims, the best criteria for judging a memoir is whether it’s as good as a novel, then Mary Karr’s latest memoir, Lit, definitely makes the cut. Displaying the precise insights of the poet that she is, along with her trademark wit, Karr once again proves what an amazingly gifted writer she is. [...]

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Alice Munro’s latest short story collection, Too Much Happiness, is not a book for the faint of heart.  The ten stories that comprise this collection seem exceptionally dark, even for a writer not known for happy endings.  Fortunately this bleak outlook is somewhat redeemed (at least for me) by Munro’s practice of giving her protagonists, [...]

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In 2005 Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner came out with a book improbably titled Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explains the Hidden Side of Everything.  Unexpectedly it turned out to be a run-away success.  Now the same guys have come out with a follow-up book that purports to take up where their last book [...]

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“A Staggering Work of Heartbreaking Reality” is the way one critic referred to Dave Eggers’ book about the Kafkaesque “trials” of a Syrian immigrant caught up in the chaotic  and often brutal aftermath of Katrina. This work of nonfiction is entitled Zeitoun (pronounced “zay-toon”) and came out in July of 2009. Before Katrina hit, Abdulrahman Zeitoun, [...]

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Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout is truly a treasure–an immensely satisfying and deeply affecting work with one of the most full realized fictional characters I’ve encountered in some time. Call by some “a novel in stories,” these thirteen linked stories set in a small town in Maine, focus on an acerbic, rather unlikeable retired school [...]

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Soldier’s Heart by Elizabeth Samet is a slim volume that would have escaped my attention had I not chanced upon a brief review of it a couple of months ago. This rather meditative memoir by a woman –a civilian–who teaches literature at West Point is a gem—elegantly written, literary ,yet unpretentious, and surprisingly moving. Samet [...]

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Patrick McGrath is coming tomorrow night to sign and read from his new book, Trauma, and I can hardly wait to hear him read and ask him some questions about his work in general. Soon after I started working for Lemuria I picked up his book Asylum. It may have been his first book or [...]

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Regeneration, the first book of Pat Barker’s trilogy about WWI, is the most powerful anti-war book I’ve ever read, and one of the best pieces of historical fiction I’ve ever read as well. Her latest book, Life Class, revisits WWI but not as successfully as the Regeneration Trilogy. The book is divided into two parts. [...]

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While I’m not a particular fan of mysteries I found Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris, the author of Chocolat, to be great escapist fare. In this highly entertaining work, Ms. Harris manages to switch genres with great ease and even greater success. Set in an old line English prep school called St. Oswald’s Grammar [...]

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