Posts

Post Type
Audience

Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead

If you’re looking for a sprawling novel that spans much of the twentieth-century and enters the twenty-first, features an array of distinctive points of view and complex relationships, ventures to far-flung places, and explores big ideas, then I invite you to consider reading Maggie Shipstead’s most recent release, Great Circle (2021).

Exit West

In an unnamed city, Nadia and Saeed meet and fall in love. As a civil war erupts around them, they flee their homeland. Author Mohsin Hamid uses doors as a way to transport people from one destination to the next, infusing the novel with a hint of magical realism. Exit West (2017) is a contemporary bittersweet love story and a war story from the refugee perspective.

Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen

Crossroads (2021) is the first novel I’ve read by Jonathan Franzen, an author who made a big splash when his first novel, The Corrections, was released, just over twenty years ago now. Franzen has gone on to write other popular novels (with single word titles), including Freedom and Purity, along with multiple essay collections.