In Hester, Laurie Lico Albanese creates a hypnotic world where we’re invited to consider contrasting themes of past and present, desire and pain, hope, disappointment, freedom, and constraint. It’s also a story of creator and muse, as Albanese imagines what might have been the inspiration behind Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter and its heroine Hester Prynne.
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Anatomy: A Love Story, by Dana Schwartz, was really enjoyable! I will say the big “reveals” were easy to piece together early in the book, which diminished a lot of the suspense for me. Still, getting there was fun.
Alix E. Harrow’s The Once and Future Witches is beautifully written, with an adept combination of several themes and genres – historical fiction, feminism, witchcraft, family, and even coming-of-age.
I’m glad I stumbled upon Robin LaFevers’ Grave Mercy. It’s structured around many historical facts and people in 15th-century France, mixed with a healthy dose of supernatural fantasy. It’s a balance that LaFevers gets just right.
It does not surprise me that it took Anthony Doerr 10 years to write his adult fiction novel All the Light We Cannot See. It is a beautifully written, carefully plotted book that – despite being somewhat lengthy at 544 pages – relies on each and every word to convey story, meaning, and emotion.
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BOOK:30 