Once in a while, mistakes happen. I mention this mistake because it testifies to something powerful about Patrick Ryan's new novel, Buckeye. When I made a late request for an advance review copy of Buckeye, the copy I received looked fine, but when I opened it I realized it was mistakenly bound backwards. The title page was at the very end of this over-450-page novel.
Gone are the heady days of the beach read, summarily swapped for the kinds of books a school board can really get behind. At least, that's true for the lucky folks who still get to make learning their primary occupation. For everyone else, there's a consolation for the drudgery of the day job: those happy off-hours when, instead of The Great Gatsby, say, you can still crack open whatever you darn well please.
In a remote monastery perched perilously on top of a crag in Piedmont, Italy, an old man lies dying. Thirty-two monks stand vigil at the deathbed; Mimo Vitaliani has lived among them for 40 years, yet few of them know exactly why. Nor did Vitaliani come alone, but with a mysterious statue that is kept under lock and key in the depths of the Sacra di San Michele,
In David Park's latest novel, time blurs as past and present intertwine, reflecting the evolution of personal struggles within the backdrop of Northern Ireland's rich history.
Knowing she would narrate it later back in the house, Florence would have to tell the story a different way. That instinct to reshape the unbearable into something legible sits at the core of Nightingale.
"The lure of travel, I thought, is only the lure of illusion, the mistaken belief that in a new country with different people and different ways, we can escape the confines of ourselves..."
In the early 17th-century wilderness, a servant girl flees a smallpox-ridden settlement, embracing survival through her resourcefulness against frigid conditions and patriarchal violence.
