Improvement by Joan Silber Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge

Improvement by Joan Silber; Counterpoint, 2017. 227 pages; $26.00 (hardcover); reading level: adult. Part I of this three-part novel dangles the prospect that this will be an intriguing but straightforward story. It’s 2012 and Reyna, living in Brooklyn and the single mother of a four-year-old, narrates. We meet Aunt Kiki, Reyna’s boyfriend Boyd and, after… [Read More]

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders; Random House, 2017. 343 pages; $17.00 (paperback); reading level: adult. Set in February of 1862, in a very real cemetery where the very real body of Willie Lincoln has just been placed in a borrowed crypt by his bereaved father, the first character we meet is a very… [Read More]

The Mayor of Mogadishu by Andrew Harding Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge

The Mayor of Mogadishu; A Story of Chaos and Redemption in the Ruins of Somalia by Andrew Harding; St. Martin’s Press, 2016.  278 pages; $26.99 (hardcover); reading level: adult. As Harding admits in his introduction, this is both a biography of Mohamud “Tarzan” Nur (mayor of Mogadishu, Somalia from 2010 to 2014) and a recounting… [Read More]

The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge

The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017. 247 pages; $26.00 (hardcover); reading level: adult. In the opening chapter of this brilliant novel, set in Brooklyn in the first half of the 20th century, 32-year-old Jim commits suicide and three nuns sweep in to comfort his pregnant wife, who, in the final paragraph… [Read More]

Happiness TM by Will Ferguson Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge

Happiness TM by Will Ferguson; Canongate, 2003.  309 pages; reading level: adult. First written in 2001, then re-titled and re-issued in 2003, this is a satirical look at pre-9/11 America through the eyes of a Canadian writer.  It was recently recommended by one of my favorite authors (also Canadian) so I was surprised to find… [Read More]

The Professor and the Mad Man by Simon Winchester Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge

The Professor and the Madman; A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester; HarperCollins, 1999.  242 pages; $15.99 (paperback); reading level:  adult. In 1634, the French established the Académie Française to catalogue, and keep a watchful eye on, their language.  It wasn’t until 1857 that Richard Chenevix… [Read More]

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles; Viking, 2016.  462 pages; $27.00 (hardcover); reading level:  adult. On June 21, 1922, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov is declared to be a “former person” and sentenced to house arrest in the Hotel Metropol in Moscow. Despite this setback, we sense that it is the Count, rather than the… [Read More]

Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge

Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser; Dover Thrift Editions, 2004 (first edition Doubleday, 1900). 352 pages (paperback); $7.00; reading level: high school/adult. In 1889, when nineteen-year-old Carrie Meeber, arrives in Chicago from a small town to look for a job, she is, by turns, dazzled and defeated by big-city life.  We look through her eyes with… [Read More]

Cyrus Field’s Big Dream; The Daring Effort to Lay the First Transatlantic Telegraph Cable by Mary Morton Cowan Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge

Cyrus Field’s Big Dream; The Daring Effort to Lay the First Transatlantic Telegraph Cable by Mary Morton Cowan; Calkins Creek, 2018. 224 pages; $19.95 (hardcover); reading level: grades 4-12. Cyrus Field didn’t know the first thing about telegraphs when he retired from running a successful paper mill in 1853. But when his “big dream” took hold,… [Read More]

Winter by Christopher Nicholson Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge

Winter by Christopher Nicholson; Europa Editions, 2015. 269 pages; $17.00 (paperback); reading level: adult. Novels about famous writers are in vogue just now. This one, narrowly focused on the last four years of the life of British novelist/poet Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), rises to the top of the stack. When a stage version of Hardy’s novel,… [Read More]