Book Reviews
Book
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
This half of the book is largely focused on the experience of being an educated woman coming-of-age in the ’50s. Relaying Esther's descent into madness, Plath's novel shows the struggles of the protagonist on how to decide betw...
Book
King, Queen, Knave – Vladimir Nabokov
Comic, sensual and cerebral, King, Queen and Knave dramatizes an Oedipal love triangle, a tragi-comedy of husband, wife and lover, through Dreyer the rich businessman, his ripe-lipped ad mercenary wife Martha, and their bespect...
Book
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov's masterpiece, Lolita is the story of middle-aged Humbert Humbert and his tragic love affair with his 12-year-old stepdaughter Dolores "Lolita" Haze. A post-war novel, the journey of a European man and an Ameri...
Book
Pnin – Vladimir Nabokov
Nabokov's Professor Pnin is a comic character who is employed at an American college in the 1950's. The protagonist struggles to maintain his dignity throughout the narrative when surrounded by academic conspiracies that threat...
Book
Beloved – Toni Morrison
Terrible, unspeakable things happened to Sethe at Sweet Home, the farm where she lived as a slave for so many years until she escaped to Ohio. Her new life is full of hope but eighteen years later she is still not free. Sethe's...
Book
Moby Dick – Herman Melville
The novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville is an epic tale of the voyage of the whaling ship the Pequod and its captain, Ahab, who relentlessly pursues the great Sperm Whale or the Moby Dick, during a journey around the world.
Book
Spoon River Anthology – E.L. Masters
Edgar Lee Masters creates a compelling free-verse monologue in which former citizens of a mythical Midwestern town speak from the grave of the hopes and dreams of their lives.
Book
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
To Kill a Mockingbird which takes place in Alabama during the Depression is narrated by the protagonist Scott Finch. It is a story of human compassion, of innocence, kindness, hatred and most of all of love seen through a child...
Book
Pigs in Heaven – Barbara Kingsolver
Barbara Kingsolver’s bestselling Pigs in Heaven continues the tale of Turtle and Taylor Greer, a Native American girl and her adoptive mother who have settled in Tucson, Arizona, as they both try to overcome their difficult pas...
Book
Prodigal Summer – Barbara Kingsolver
Prodigal Summer weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives inhabiting the forested mountains and struggling small farms of southern Appalachia.
