AM: I’m only now reading The Harvard Bride, which I somehow missed upon its release, and now we’re on the verge of the publication of The Ex-Suicide. I’d like to talk to you about both books. KC: Don’t forget The Headmaster’s Darlings and All the Governor’s Men, the first two novels in the Mountain Brook […]
“Leaving Tuscaloosa,” by Walter Bennett
Reviewed by Amy Susan Wilson In his novel Leaving Tuscaloosa, Walter Bennett creates a haunting fictional world steeped in a gripping story that raises questions regarding our moral obligations to human communities. The novel is set in the Deep South of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in 1962. This is the year before Bull Connor turned his fire […]
May Read of the Month: “The Kings and Queens of Roam,” by Daniel Wallace
Reviewed by Lizzie Gheorghita Daniel Wallace fans, count yourselves lucky. The Birmingham native’s forthcoming novel, The Kings and Queens of Roam, echoes the passion for mythology and adventure first evidenced in Big Fish. Wallace illuminates the rich history of a fictional land rife with burly lumberjacks, Chinese immigrants, feral dogs, and ghosts, and seamlessly melds fanciful and imaginative elements […]
April Read of the Month: “March with Me,” by Rosalie T. Turner
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 […]
“Fielder’s Choice,” by J. Mark Hart
Review by Matthew Simmons Years ago, after reading Richard Russo’s Mohawk, I decided I needed more flexibility in labeling fiction. Obviously, there was pulp, there was genre fiction, and there was the rarified air of “lit-tra-ture.” But what I’d found in Mohawk seemed to somehow occupy parts of all of those labels simultaneously and effortlessly. […]