Category: Review

The biography of Wisconsin author David Rhodes is as dramatic as his fiction.

Elizabeth Strout earned a Pulitzer Prize for her novel Olive Kitteridge, a collection of stories centered on a retired junior high math teacher living in Maine.

The elegiac tone of Kent Haruf’s Benediction suggests that this novel might be his last, but his fans hope for future returns to Holt, Colorado, the fictional setting populated by characters who lead lives of quiet desperation but nonetheless make connections that allow them not only to endure but to find moments of peace.

Rebecca Skloot first learned about HeLa cells in 1988 when she enrolled in a community college biology class after failing her freshman year in high school.

Stepmothers have traditionally gotten a bad rap in fiction, and sometimes, as in the story of Cinderella, deservedly so. But as Kristina Riggle reveals in her novel Things We Didn’t Say, being a stepmother is not an easy role, especially with teenage stepchildren.

As an English major, many people find my lack of interest in authors such as Shakespeare or Chaucer surprising. While I do enjoy a good book over sunrise and morning coffee, it is not always the most acclaimed literary scholars that capture my attention in a text.

Four stories are told in Danielle Sosin’s lyrical and elegiac novel The Long-Shining Waters, all grounded by the shores of Lake Superior. Although separated by centuries of time, the narratives of three women are linked not only by geography and incidental events, but also by the common elements of human spirit.

Katherine Mansfield, the British writer who tried to free herself from “the tyranny of plot,” might admire Margaret Hermes’ short story collection Relative Strangers.

Adolescent literature has become less childish in recent years. A genre that once upon a time dealt with issues of making the team and getting a date to prom now often takes on grim realities of life rather than fairytale romance. Such is the case with John Green’s latest novel, The Fault in Our Stars.

“A successful man is one who has learned to live content with what he can obtain honestly.” ~ Frank A. Schneider, c. 1930. These words were written by a 14-year-old Frank Schneider while a student at Milwaukee Vocational School.

As a title The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter suggests romance, but Carson McCullers’ classic novel does not deal with the course of true love. Instead she echoes themes found in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.

A trademark of Kurt Vonnegut’s fiction is his use of authorial intrusions, often blurring the boundaries of fiction and autobiography. In his iconic Slaughterhouse-Five, for example, describing the toilet in the prisoner of war camp in Germany, Vonnegut writes: “An American near Billy wailed that he had excreted everything but his brains.”

The starting point for I married you for happiness is Nina’s calls for her husband Philip to come to dinner, only to realize that he is not going to awaken from his nap. Her first decision is that she will not give her adult daughter the sad news until morning, and her second is that she will spend one last night with her husband before she notifies anyone.

During spring break of 2001 when teacher/writer Richard Horan set out from his home in Wisconsin with his wife and two daughters for a vacation along the Gulf Coast, he had given no thought to collecting tree seeds, much less writing a book about the project.

Ernest Hemingway was a man’s man, glorying in those things male: fishing, hunting, fighting bulls, going to war, and enjoying fleeting love.

Changing the channel and forgetting the war in the Mideast has been easy for many of us because a volunteer army has limited its personal impact on society. Slap a “Support Our Troops” magnet on the rear of our SUV, and we feel we’ve done our part for the war effort.

War and violence have been an integral, almost constant part of the world’s history; in fact, in Mark Kurlansky’s book Non-Violence: The History of a Dangerous Idea, he states that philosophers Will and Ariel Durant determined in 1968 “that of the previous 3,421 years, only 268 had been without war.”

Stieg Larsson’s life was made of the same dramatic stuff that fills his fiction. Because the Swedish journalist and editor opposed antidemocratic, rightwing extremist and neo-Nazi ideologies, he routinely received death threats. He could not marry his partner because marriage to her would have made his address public and increased his vulnerability. And during his […]

In his first novel, Rearview Sunset, author Brett Champan tells the story of Beau Jamison, a man on a journey to reflect on his life and all of the events that led him to where his is now and how they shaped him to be the man he is. His journey is filled with happiness, […]

Wisconsin author Jane Hamilton’s novel A Map of the World (1994) made a huge splash in the literary world when it was published. This story of a school nurse falsely accused of child molestation was painfully compelling to read. Both this work and her earlier success The Book of Ruth (1988) won a number of […]