Rated of 5
by Diana Astounding!
This is a story that reached out and touched my heart. I cried, laughed, was frightened, and felt love with this book. Ward really knew what she was writing. This book was exhilarating to the mind and to the soul. Reading this book was the best thing I've done and accomplished in my life so far. I would read this book over and over again. Bravo!
Rated of 5
by Jenna Blum
I was the fiction editor at AGNI magazine when an excerpt from Liza Ward's OUTSIDE VALENTINE crossed my desk, and it raised the goosebumps on my arm that signify a true and unusual new talent. I told my senior editor that we had to snap up the story--one of the segments of the novel featuring Caril Ann Fugate's voice--right away, and he agreed--but it was too late. Luckily, Ms. Ward gave us another excerpt, which we did publish. I was delighted to see the novel subsequently appear and receive such superlative reviews, which it certainly deserves. Caril Ann in particular, with her extraordinary diction and painful wistfulness, is a marvel of a character. As a novelist myself, I take my hat off to Liza Ward & will be watching eagerly for her next book.
Rated of 5
by Albert Goldbarth
THis book has a tendency toward the not only melodramatic, but simplified understanding of lower class America that stems from obvious wealth. I think the author has obviously driven a hard point home about research: It doesn't always pay to know the facts if the knowledge of human experience is one which cannot hear the pulse of its character. Risk sentimentality, one poet said, or you're not risking anything.
Fearless, gripping, at once darkly funny and tender, spanning three continents and numerous lives, Americanah is a richly told story set in today's globalized world.
The story of an American family, middle class in middle America, ordinary in every way but one. But that exception is the beating heart of this extraordinary novel.
First time novelist Vaddey Ratner captured my heart and senses in this novel based on her childhood in Cambodia. Her story transcends any news story...
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From the first page, I was drawn in by the lyrical writing of the author and mesmerized as the narrator, eight year old Raami, remembered the years...
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Trite but true, all good things must come to an end. I so wanted to keep reading the wonderful prose, the settings that let one think they are part...
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Kenn Nesbitt is new Children's Poet Laureate(Jun 12 2013) Kenn Nesbitt has been named the new Children's Poet Laureate: Consultant in Children's Poetry to the Poetry Foundation, which noted that the two-year position...
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