Showing posts with label American First Novelists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label American First Novelists. Show all posts

1/21/2010

Review of Passing Strange: A Novel (Hardcover)

I love debut novels, the books that took years to write, that have the culmination of the best ideas a writer has saved for a decade or a lifetime.Because it isn't long before the publisher asks them to squeeze out a book a year and the writing gets bland.In that capacity, I loved Passing Strange, a superb debut novel.

Strange is the story a young woman blessed with a perfect body and a highly imperfect face.Her body has enough to draw the eye of a young socialite who convinces her to marry him-and get plastic surgery post-marriage.But once she agrees and she has the face to match the body, her world changes and she begins to views others (specifically the black community near and within her home) as the disenfranchised group to which she used to belong.The story moves and is written with a beautiful and clever voice in our narrator.

The only place the book came up short, which is why I only gave it four stars, is the ending.I almost feel that Sally MacLeod had started writing the book but forgot how she would end it.The story goes down a path and gets stuck there (the murder of her husband) and seems to abandon the writing and voice of the earlier chapters.

That said, it is still worth a read, and worth a purchase.This is an excellent debut novel overall and I will be keeping my eye on her next novel.



Click Here to see more reviews about: Passing Strange: A Novel (Hardcover)

1/20/2010

Review of Want Some, Get Some (Paperback)

Street tale novelists better move over and make room for this gritty and edgy debut novel by Pam Ward! Want Some, Get Some is an urban tale that centers around Trudy aka Trudy with the Booty, a twenty year-old woman who knows that the streets of South Central LA are not all that life has to offer and wants out of living her daily nightmare.

Life has truly dealt Trudy a funky deck of cards. Her slick and shady ex-boyfriend, Lil Steve, hustled her into a relationship and making a sex tape only to turn around and sell it around the neighborhood, leaving her to face constant ridicule and unwanted sexual advances. Trudy's mother, Joan, turns her back on her only child and kicks her out of the house, leaving her to face life on the streets, living in seedy apartments and with even more seedier people. Joan tries to use the excuse of the tape as the reason for kicking Trudy out, but it is really her own personal motives that she puts first instead of her daughter. Trudy finds the only thing that keeps her sane is singing on stage at Dee's Parlor, a rundown juke joint that serves as a true black hole for all the shady players, hustlers, ballers, and shot callers.

Trudy knows that revenge is truly best served cold so she drums up a bank heist plan to not only get out of her nightmare but get back at Lil Steve. Working at Dee's Parlor surrounded by some of the best of the best in the underworld gives her a perfect opportunity to put this plan into action.The only thing Trudy did not think about was that everyone has something that they want and will do whatever it takes to get it.

Pam Ward writing is very blunt and not for the faint of heart. There are plenty of characters in this novel that might confuse you at first but as the story progresses all of them intertwine to create one firecracker of a novel. Not only is there plenty of action and suspense, but there is also a hint of romance. Readers might need to buckle their seat belts and hold onto their seats, because this novel will take you on an intense ride that you will surely not forget!


Reviewed by Angelique
APOOO BookClub

Product Description
A Gritty Street Tale Bristling With The Muscle And Teeth Of Iceberg Slim And Donald Goines

Trudy, a.k.a. "Trudy with the Booty," knows what she wants and how to get it. But a better life far away from the jacked-up streets of South Central L.A. needs to be financed, and she can't think about leaving without handing some sweet payback to Lil' Steve, her slick talking ex. Ever since he started selling nude videos of her to the neighborhood men, Trudy can barely walk the streets. His demise would be the icing on the cake. But Trudy's plan to get even and escape the ghetto is more than risky--it may be the worst mistake of her life. Having recruited a crew of hustlers, car-jackers, and homewreckers who hang out at the seedy nightclub, Dee's Parlor, where she sings nights after working days as a bank teller, Trudy is ready to put her scheme into action--a heist that can make them all rich. There's just one problem: Jimmy, a stone-cold killer who doesn't like being ripped off. And while the best laid plans often do go awry, no one could have guessed where this wild, crazy ride takes this cast of bumbling lawbreakers and heartbreakers as they scramble over and under each other to get what they want.

A fast-paced, exhilarating drama with sharply drawn characters, sultry writing, and a fierce intensity of emotion, Want Some, Get Some is a brilliantly assured debut. A promising new talent, Pam Ward brings a woman's sense of bravado to a boy's game.

About the Author
Pam Ward is a Los Angeles native. Her work can be found in Best American Erotica 2002, Men We Cherish, and poetry in Catch the Fire!!! She's the recipient of a California Arts Council Writing Fellowship and a New Letters Award for Poetry. This is her first novel.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Want Some, Get Some (Paperback)

1/14/2010

Review of Up Through the Water (Paperback)

In this promising first novel, Steinke creates characters that are introspective and believable, an accomplishment in itself these days.Having vacationed at the outer banks of NC a number of times, I can tellyou that this work transports you there.Steinke is efficient and poeticin her use of language, and her plot is loosely framed on the cycles ofseason and life with the time worn metaphor of water as rejuvenationsomehow freshened through her young eye.

Product Description
Darcey Steinke's first novel, now back in print, is an unusually assured and lyrical debut. Set on an island resort town off North Carolina, it tells of summer people and islanders, mothers and sons, women and men, love and its dangers. It is the story of Emily, a woman free as the waves she swims in every day, of the man who wants to clip her wings, of her son and the summer that he will become a man. George Garrett called it "clean-cut, lean-lined, quickly moving, and audacious. . . . [Steinke is] compassionate without sentimentality, romantic without false feelings, and clearly and extravagantly gifted." "Beautifully written . . . a seamless and almost instinctive prose that often reads more like poetry than fiction." -- Robert Olmstead New York Times Book Review; "Dazzling and charged . . . Darcey Steinke has the sensuous and precise visions of female and male, and of the light and dark at the edge of the sea." -- John Casey.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Up Through the Water (Paperback)

12/20/2009

Review of Someone to Catch My Drift (Paperback)

This book is full of drama but the aothor made things a little bit too obvious. She didn't give the characters a chance to show that they were more than just people looking for love in all the wrong places.

Product Description
Aspiring singer Nikai Parker is depressed. Her boyfriend has been sent to jail for dating an underage girl, and she feels abandoned and desperate. That is, until her best friend, Sheila, convinces her that a night of clubbing is exactly what she needs to forget her troubles and lift her spirits. While at the club, Nikai's luck begins to improve when she meets a handsome firefighter named Robert Hayes-whom she believes may just be the man of her dreams. As their relationship progresses, Nikai falls completely in love and begins making plans to spend the rest of her life with Robert. However, lady luck has other plans-because he is involved with another woman, and this sassy hairdresser named Karen is not going to give up her man without a fight.

About the Author
Jacqueline Powell lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Someone to Catch My Drift (Paperback)

12/02/2009

Review of The Red Passport: Stories (Hardcover)

Bravo to Katherine Shonk--The Red Passport is a welcome and rare showcase for the classic craft of the American short story.Katherine's characters (sometimes bursting with youth and other times exhausted from life's trials) are both unique and universal.She shares an understanding of human experience and modern-day Russian that, along with her wonderful ear for language and eye for surroundings, draws her characters to life on the page.Her style is clear and captivating, each metaphor a little miracle.I look forward to more from this outstanding American author.



Click Here to see more reviews about: The Red Passport: Stories (Hardcover)

11/05/2009

Review of The Lake, the River & the Other Lake (Paperback)

From the moment this book crossed my desk at the library where I work, I couldn't put it down.That's not to say it's heavy on plot.It's the characters that keep you reading and I'm always a sucker for interesting character development.My favorite person in the book is definitely Roger Drinkwater, a Native American/Vietnam Vet/swim coach/beef jerky maker who has a bit of a problem with jet skis.It was nice to live through him vicariously as he carried out his vendetta in some explosive ways.

As you read the book (and you should definitely pick up a copy), get yourself some fudge and surf over to www.steve-amick.com where you can listen to the soundtrack for this book, the Weneshkeen Jukebox.

It's a great summer read. I hate saying this about a book, but I wish there was a sequel or a TV series made out of this one. I miss the characters already.



Click Here to see more reviews about: The Lake, the River & the Other Lake (Paperback)