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Reviews by Cathryn Conroy

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The Secret Chord: A Novel
by Geraldine Brooks

An Extraordinary Tale! You'll Never Read the Biblical Story of David the Same Way Again (4/19/2023)

This extraordinary novel by Geraldine Brooks tells the biblical story of King David in such a compelling and riveting way that you will wish she would do the same for all the holy scriptures! Told in the first person by the prophet Natan (Nathan), who spent his entire life …more

Speak No Evil
by Uzodinma Iweala

Powerful and Profound. It Is Impossible to Read This Book and Not Feel Stunned by It (4/19/2023)

Oh, this book broke my heart. But in a good way, because the powerful and profound message it delivers speaks the truth. It is raw. It is brilliant. It is deeply affecting. It is impossible to read this book and not feel stunned by it.

Niru is 18 and in his senior year at an …more

The Nest
by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

Unlike Most of the Reader Reviewers, I Liked This Book! (4/19/2023)

I liked this book! And it would appear that based on many of the reader reviews this is distinctly a minority opinion.

Granted, it's not great literature, but most definitely it is not as awful as so many are depicting it. Written by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, this is a story …more

Sing, Unburied, Sing
by Jesmyn Ward

This Book Is Worth Reading Just for the Writing! The Words Simply Sing (4/19/2023)

Poetry. Sheer, beautiful, pure poetry. But it's prose. Of course, it is. This is a novel. And. Every. Word. Is. Perfect. That is what makes it poetry. That is what makes the language sing. This book is worth reading just for the writing.

Jojo is 13, almost a man, but still …more

Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows
by Balli Kaur Jaswal

The Clever Title Should Win an Award…But the Book—Not So Much (4/19/2023)

I admit it! I admit it! I bought and read this book by Balli Kaur Jaswal because of the title. While the book itself is only OK, the clever title should win an award.

Here's the short version: This book is so bad…it's (almost) good. Soap opera, anyone?

Nikki is 22, a recent …more

Normal People
by Sally Rooney

Stunning, Intelligent, and Accomplished. This Book Grabbed My Heart and Soul (4/19/2023)

What does it really mean to be in a relationship? What does it mean to be in young and in love? With sparse but beautiful language, author Sally Rooney has written a (literary) love story for the ages.

Marianne and Connell grew up in the same small Irish town. She is wealthy, …more

The Dark Monk: A Hangman's Daughter Tale, Book 2
by Oliver Potzsch

A Really Good Tale Well Told (4/19/2023)

Part historical novel, part adventure story and part murder mystery, this intriguing book, the second in "The Hangman's Daughter" series by Oliver Pötzsch, is quite the page-turner. Underneath an intricate plot, this is also a none-too-subtle statement about Christianity— …more

Unsheltered: A Novel
by Barbara Kingsolver

When the World as You Know It Inexorably Changes, What Would You Do? (4/19/2023)

What happens when the world view you have always known inexorably shifts? Do you embrace the change as forward-thinking or fight it for all you're worth? If you simply deny that the change is real, will those words be enough to bring back the good old days? That is the …more

My Life as a Rat
by Joyce Carol Oates

A Deeply Affecting Book About Forgiveness (4/19/2023)

This is a deeply affecting and heart-wrenching book about forgiveness. And it's about the most difficult form of forgiveness: Forgiving oneself.

Violet Rue is the youngest of seven children in the Irish Catholic, blue collar Kerrigan family of South Niagara, New York. While …more

The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids
by Alexandra Robbins

This Book Is Deeply Disturbing…and That Is Exactly Why You Should Read It (4/19/2023)

This book is deeply disturbing. And that is exactly why you should read it.

Written by Alexandra Robbins, the book follows four juniors, three seniors and one graduate of Walt Whitman High School in tony Bethesda, Maryland for a little more than a year during 2004-2005. As …more the title would indicate, these teenagers have it all and do it all. They are highly intelligent and deeply motivated. They not only excel at their schoolwork—be it AP English or AP physics—but also excel at athletics, art, and music. They participate in a dizzyingly high number of extracurricular activities. The only thing they don't do is sleep.

This is what it feels like to be an overachiever:
• Getting a B is like getting an F.
• Cheating is perfectly OK if it means getting the A.
• Sabotaging other students' work is a legitimate way to compete.
• It's perfectly OK to take unprescribed ADD drugs for better focus.
• If you're going to play a sport, you absolutely must be a superstar. Or don't play.

While many of the students profiled in the book are highly self-motivated, some of them are pushed—relentlessly and (in one case) cruelly—by their parents. The students and parents truly believe that if the kids don't go to an Ivy League university or an Ivy-wannabe, all the effort, time and lack of sleep in high school was worthless. It's Harvard-Yale-Princeton or nothing. And that is a lot of pressure!

This book is nonfiction, but Robbins is so talented that it reads more like a novel. It was hard to put down because I wanted to know what happened next to Julie, Taylor, Sam, C.J., Ryland and the rest of the crowd.

I have only one quibble with this extraordinary book: Except for one student, those who are profiled all come from wealthy families. The cost of college is not a concern. So while the parents and students stress over an A- or a "low" SAT score of 1410 (out of 1600), at no point is there any discussion—much less worry or stress—about the outrageously high cost of these top-tier colleges to which they all aspire. There are overachievers at every high school in this country, but it is truly rare when parents can easily write checks to cover $65,000 a year. Most overachievers also have to lose what precious sleep they do get wondering how they will pay for it all. (less)

The Orchid House: A Novel
by Lucinda Riley

What a Huge Disappointment! Weak and Boring…Nothing More Than a Mediocre Soap Opera (4/19/2023)

Oh, what a huge disappointment! The publisher's plot summary is spectacular, and based on that this could have been a wonderful, compelling ChickLit book. But it wasn't. Why? The writing is stilted, the dialogue is strained and unrealistic, and the characters' actions are …more

Courting Mr. Lincoln
by Louis Bayard

Not a (4/19/2023)

What this book is: A fascinating, extraordinarily well-written historical novel on a young Abraham Lincoln, whose future wife, Mary Todd, was making eyes at him across the well-to-do parlors of Springfield, Illinois in the early 1840s, while at the same time the future …more

The Island of Sea Women
by Lisa See

This Is a Novel Masquerading as Nonfiction: A Gripping Story That Is Rich in Historical Detail (4/18/2023)

Some books we read for entertainment. Some books we read for information. And some books, such as this one by Lisa See, provide both. Actually, there is so much factual information in this book that it is almost a novel masquerading as nonfiction.

Spanning 70 years from 1938 …more

The Lake House
by Kate Morton

A Can't-Put-It-Down Novel That Is Totally Captivating (4/18/2023)

The best way to describe this can't-put-it-down novel by Kate Morton is: multilayered. No, wait. Multi-multi-multi-layered. There is SO much going on here! And every bit of it is a literary delight.

At its very core—deep, deep down—this is a mystery. But because it's so much …more

Varina
by Charles Frazier

Ingeniously Plotted, Lyrical Language…But the Storyline Is Confusing and Can Be Difficult to Follow (4/18/2023)

This is the elegiac story of people living in and somehow surviving the perilous crisis, conflict, and calamity in the days, weeks, and years following the end of the American Civil War. But what makes this particular tale unique is that it is told through the eyes of one …more

Women Talking
by Miriam Toews

Emotionally Charged and Haunting. Not an Easy Book to Read, But Vitally Important (4/18/2023)

This is a novel that will haunt you. It is not only deeply disturbing, but also an ominous warning about the powerful authority and absolute control some men exert over women — both their minds and their bodies.

Taking place in a tightly-knit and isolated Mennonite …more community, virtually the entire book is the minutes of several secret meetings a group of women is holding in a hayloft. They are discussing their future. All of them, along with almost every other woman and girl in the colony, were repeatedly raped over five years by eight men in the community, who stole into their bedrooms in the middle of the night, knocking them out with an animal anesthetic, and then having their way with them. The women and girls would awake in the morning groggy and confused and covered in blood, feces, and semen. Even a three-year-old girl was violated in the same way. The women were told that Satan had visited them to punish them for their sins.

But that is not the story of this book.

The story is what happens after the women finally figure out what is going on. Because one woman attempted to kill one of the men with a scythe, the police were called to take the men to jail in the nearby city — for their own safety. And now the women are trying to discern what they will do to protect themselves in the future, including possibly leaving the community — a bold and intimidating step, since they have no idea where they are geographically. However unlikely it is, the narrator of the story is a man. The women trust him, and since they are illiterate, they want him to write what happens at the meetings.

There are many ways, some of which could have been quite salacious, that author Miriam Toews could have written this story, which is (shockingly) based on true events in a Mennonite community. What she did was to zero in on how women everywhere solve their problems: by talking about it. These hayloft discussions, filled with anger and deep-seated psychological pain, are heated with diverse opinions, sometimes unfocused, but always fruitful. Above all, the discussions are philosophical reflections on the meaning of their lives.

And at the root of it all is the question the women must eventually answer: Can they forgive the rapists, who are, after all, their husbands, brothers, uncles, and nephews, for the evil deeds they did? Is forgiveness even possible? And if not, how can the women remain in community with the men?

Because it is so emotionally charged, this is not an easy book to read. But it is an important one…a vitally important one. (less)

News from Heaven: The Bakerton Stories
by Jennifer Haigh

Big Stories About Small Town Life: Touching, Insightful, and Haunting (4/18/2023)

This touching, insightful, and haunting book of short stories by Jennifer Haigh continues the story of Bakerton, Pennsylvania, a fictional coal-mining town, that she introduced in "Baker Towers: A Novel" and continues after "News From Heaven" in "Heat and Light: A Novel."

…more

The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11
by Garrett M. Graff

To All the Unsung Heroes: This Is the Story of Ordinary People Who Did Extraordinary Deeds (4/18/2023)

This book will make you cry. A lot. As in, you had better have a tissue in hand when reading it.

While it is emotionally draining, this is such a vitally important book that I think everyone should read it. If you were alive on 9/11, you should read it. If you have children …more

This House is Haunted
by John Boyne

Goosebumps and Shivers! A Chilling Ghost Story for Literary Types (4/18/2023)

I think this book is brilliant! It is a chilling ghost story for literary types, complete with a cameo by Charles Dickens.

Written in the Dickensian style by the inimitable John Boyne, this gothic tale opens on a cold and rainy night in London in October 1867 when Eliza …more

All He Ever Wanted
by Anita Shreve

A Powerful Book! Deeply Disturbing Psychological Study About the Possessiveness of Marriage (4/18/2023)

Author Anita Shreve is such a surprise! While none of her books — other than the "Fortune's Rocks" series — can be said to be similar to the others, this one is a true outlier. And while it took me a good while to get into the story, once I did, I was mesmerized by it.

Quite …more

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