Reviewed by Philip K. Jason This novel portrays the outer and inner worlds of two young women growing up in Birmingham, Alabama when it became the flashpoint of the Civil Rights Movement. The chapters contain subsections that alternate the consciousnesses of Letitia and Martha Ann, one black, one white, as they process the momentous changes […]
“Orchard of My Eye,” by Mark Canter
April 3, 2013 by 1 Comment
Reviewed by Donna Meredith A science fiction and thriller hybrid, Mark Canter’s Orchard of My Eye offers a fast-paced and engaging read. Canter teaches comparative religion at Florida State University. This background is reflected in the philosophical underpinnings of this novel. The main character, Nat Colt, is a research scientist dying of brain cancer. Nat imagines […]
March Read of the Month: “The Books that Mattered,” by Frye Gaillard
March 27, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Allen Mendenhall “My first encounters with books were disappointing.” That’s a curious opening line for a memoir about reading inspirational books, but an apt one, too, because Frye Gaillard anticipates right away how he will treat reading: not as an activity undertaken in isolation or as an exercise liberating readers from the quotidian […]
“The Bequest of Big Daddy,” by Jo-Ann Costa
March 20, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Andy Johnson “As I understand it, Big Daddy was born that way, unable to help himself when he acted ugly and equally unable to recognize right from wrong.” The opening line of The Bequest of Big Daddy exalts Horatio Janson, a.k.a. Ratio, a.k.a. Gage Johnson, a.k.a. Big Daddy, as the troubled but ultimately […]
February Read of the Month: “Sheer Indefinite,” by Skip Fox
February 13, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by William Aarnes Skip Fox’s Sheer Indefinite ranges over many topics. Early in the book a poem describes events in Louisiana in terms of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. There are poems that worry about how well words relate to the world (“This language is broken playground equipment”). There is a sequence of poems […]
“Eden Rise,” by Robert J. Norrell
February 6, 2013 by Leave a Comment
An earlier version of this review appeared in The Montgomery Advertiser. Reviewed by Mollie Smith Waters. What would you do if your best friend were killed right in front of you? What would you do if the person who murdered your friend then turned his weapon on you and was attempting to take your life […]