Anna Benz, an American in her late thirties, lives with her Swiss husband Bruno and their three young children in a postcard-perfect suburb of Zürich. Though she leads a comfortable, well-appointed life, Anna is falling apart inside. Adrift and increasingly unable to connect with the emotionally unavailable Bruno or even with her own thoughts and READ MORE
Category: Character-Driven
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | THE HALF BROTHER – HOLLY LECRAW
A passionate, provocative story of complex family bonds and the search for identity set within the ivy-covered walls of a New England boarding school When Charlie Garrett arrives as a young teacher at the shabby-yet-genteel Abbott School, he finds a world steeped in privilege and tradition. Fresh out of college and barely older than READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | A SPOOL OF BLUE THREAD – ANNE TYLER
From the beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning author–now in the fiftieth year of her remarkable career–a brilliantly observed, joyful and wrenching, funny and true new novel that reveals, as only she can, the very nature of a family’s life. “It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon.” This is the way Abby Whitshank always begins the story READ MORE
RELEASE DAY REVIEW | IF I FALL, IF I DIE – MICHAEL CHRISTIE
A heartfelt and wondrous debut, by a supremely gifted and exciting new voice in fiction. Will has never been to the outside, at least not since he can remember. And he has certainly never gotten to know anyone other than his mother, a fiercely loving yet wildly eccentric agoraphobe who drowns in panic at READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | THE WOMAN WHO WENT TO BED FOR A YEAR – SUE TOWNSEND
The day her children leave home, Eva climbs into bed and stays there. She’s had enough – of her kids’ carelessness, her husband’s thoughtlessness and of the world’s general indifference. Brian can’t believe his wife is doing this. Who is going to make dinner? Taking it badly, he rings Eva’s mother – but she’s READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | STATION ELEVEN – EMILY ST. JOHN MANDEL
An audacious, darkly glittering novel about art, fame and ambition set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse, from the author of three highly acclaimed previous novels. One snowy night a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to READ MORE
TOP TEN TUESDAY | BOOKS FOR READERS WHO LIKE CHARACTER-DRIVEN NOVELS
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday on The Broke and the Bookish is: Top Ten Books For Readers Who Like Character-Driven Novels. This is a timely topic for me, because I feel like I’ve read several books that fit this criterion recently. Some of these may seem surprising! Hearts and Minds – Amanda READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | FALLOUT – SADIE JONES
A deeply affecting love story set in the gritty yet magnificent theatre world of 1970s London by the award-winning, bestselling Sadie Jones, author of The Uninvited Guests and The Outcase Luke Kanowski is a young playwright: intense, magnetic, fleeing a disastrous upbringing in the North East. Arriving in London, he meets Paul Driscoll, an aspiring READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | THE VACATIONERS – EMMA STRAUB
An irresistible, deftly observed novel about the secrets, joys, and jealousies that rise to the surface over the course of an American family’s two-week stay in Mallorca. For the Posts, a two-week trip to the Balearic island of Mallorca with their extended family and friends is a celebration: Franny and Jim are observing their thirty-fifth READ MORE