Kate Pearsall’s debut, Bittersweet in the Hollow, was a solid and satisfying novel. With Lies on the Serpent’s Tongue, Pearsall delivers a strong second installment in what I hope will be at least a quartet of enchanting stories.
Tag Archives: Lovely prose
‘Headshot’ Fast-Moving but Hard-Hitting
Most of the boxers’ stakes in Headshot are drawn from the most ordinary of things, which gives the world inside the book more authenticity and the world outside it a reminder of its import.
‘Girl’ Ponders Trauma, Identity
The Girl Before Her feels less like a narrative than it does someone trying to work out where they’ve come from and how they ended up in their present place and as their present selves. The reader is a ghost over Papin’s shoulder as she turns herself, and her family, inside and out in search of answers.
‘Woods’ More Human Nature than Thriller
In The God of the Woods, Moore isn’t concerned with crafting a whodunnit so much as a careful sketch of a far more human story.
‘Chronicles’ An Intimate Look at One ‘Backyard’
It’s lovely and intimate to read such inner thoughts of another person. It’s intimate, too, to see Tan’s drawings improve over the years and the birds within them grow increasingly lifelike.
‘Believers’ a Timely Take on Tragedy
As The Great Believers shows, the familiar nature of tragedy doesn’t make it any less painful to experience. But as it also shows, the struggle to find joy and move forward even within such tragedy is a thing of beauty, too.
‘Doors’ A Lovely, if Tangled, Tale
What initially seems like naivety or secondhand confessional turns out to be something far lovelier, and more than worth the time it takes to get there.
‘Thornhedge’ Twists Fairy Tale Cozily
At just 128 pages long, Thornhedge is a sweet little fairy-tale snack with some substance to boot.
‘Promises’ a Truly Golden Collection
Whether or not I was Olivarez’s target audience, I found myself profoundly moved by many poems in this collection.
A Dizzy Summer Recounted in a New Light in ‘Tom Lake’
Pachett draws out Lara’s pivotal summer in a haze of stretched-out days that really do feel like the kind of summer that lasts far longer than the calendar suggests.
Ring Reads 