Oct 8

Oct 8 Plain Bad Heroines

Emily Danforth’s Plain Bad Heroines (2020) is an unsettling read; one replete with ghosts, curses, nightmarish yellow jackets, and plenty of the uncanny. Yet, in addition to the horror—a genre Danforth clearly plays with on multiple levels in PBH—the reader meets the witty, modern narrator, with her references to social media posts and snide humor. Plain Bad Heroines explores the lives and loves of women, both contemporary and early twentieth-century, as they unapologetically make their own ways. Plain Bad Heroines, like Danforth’s first novel, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, is LGBTQ fiction.

Nov 19

Nov 19 The Once and Future Witches

Chris Mathers Jackson

Contemporary Fiction

Among the notable witch-themed novels out this year is Alix E Harrow’s The Once and Future Witches (2020). Harrow creates a late nineteenth-century fictional world of Crow County (think southern Appalachia) and the New Salem (one hundred miles south of the ruins of old Salem). From its opening line, magic runs through The Once and Future Witches, as three wayward sisters, whom life has separated for seven years, find themselves drawn to the same city square on the same day.

Jun 25

Jun 25 Red at the Bone

Chris Mathers Jackson

Contemporary Fiction, My List of Required Reads

Jacqueline Woodson’s Red at the Bone (2019) is gut-punch of a book. Set amidst the Brooklyn brownstones (similar to previously reviewed A Woman is No Man), but in Woodson’s family drama novel, the families are African American. The family central to Red at the Bone is three generations deep that has carries many more generations’ trauma and stories, including the Tulsa massacre of migration out of 1921, the great migration north, teenage pregnancy, and the importance of saving for the future.

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