Chinua Achebe weaves a tale of change in his native Nigeria in his classic Things Fall Apart (1958). He steeps the reader in the Ibo culture of seasons, society, and gods, as we follow the life of the important villager Okonkwo and his family. Change from this incumbent culture comes in the form of British missionaries who ride bicycles, and who bring a message that will disrupt and eventually destroy a way of life and belief. Aside from its ground-breaking setting, this novel’s brilliance lies...
March 10, 2019
"The Atomic Weight of Love" by Elizabeth J. Church
Still in her early 20s, Meridian Wallace, a Western Pennsylvania girl about to make a name for herself at the University of Chicago, becomes enthralled with Alden, a professor of physics, and twenty years her senior. She marries him just as he is dispatched to an unheard-of hamlet in New Mexico, to lend his expertise to the development of a revolutionary and terrifying new weapon. In spite of her acceptance to Cornell grad school, he moves her summarily to Los Alamos and crushes her scientific...
March 06, 2019
"Everything Under" by Daisy Johnson
The murky forces in Everything Under confuse and intimidate us, the wide-eyed readers, just as they confuse and intimidate the characters. A boy who decides to grow up a woman has prescient gifts, which she uses until she forgets to. Another character wills a new gender for himself after a trauma, and a monster lives below the surface of the river, but can walk upright on dry land, and may want to kill. Many believe it is also intent on stealing. Be prepared for a novel that will make...
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