The story of ill-fated Oedipus has been told time and again by famous writers and poets since 5^th Century BC including Sophocles, Euripides and Homer. Poor Oedipus was given away by his parents, adopted by a family who kept the adoption secret and through a series of events, unwittingly murders his birth father, marries his birth mother and rules a Kingdom before finally learning the truth and, well, that’s where the authors seem to differ in their storytelling. Guterson puts his own twist on the ending, as well.

Guterson, whose previous books include, East Of The Mountain, The Other, Our Lady Of The Forest and the bestselling novel, Snow Falling On Cedars, did not take this project lightly. This is not a novella. At 300+ pages, Ed King is told in great detail with dark humor to lighten the mood of his disturbing subject matter. He even addresses his audience directly at one point, warning us the “incest” scene is about to begin by saying, “Okay. Now we approach the part of the story a reader can’t be blamed for having skipped forward to. . . the part where a mother has sex with her son. Who could blame you for being interested in this potential hot part.” I might’ve chosen, “cringe-worthy” instead of, “hot part.”

Guterson is a skilled writer who gives Oedipus a new name and plunks him down in the 1960s but remains true to the legend, inserting details of the original story like little treasures for the reader to find. You’d think knowing all the major plot points ahead of time would make the book less intriguing. Wrong. For the reader, half the fun is figuring out how he’ll get there. For me, it was a bit like watching a “slasher” movie. You know the pretty girl with the large chest and minimal dialogue who volunteers to go in to the woods alone at night is going to be killed, you just don’t know how.

Fans of Greek mythology will be delighted by this technologically-advanced Oedipus and the new set of challenges the story faces by telling it in the modern age.

You’ve seen LOST, you’ve read LORD OF THE FLIES, and you maybe even remember GILLIGAN’S ISLAND (a show I’ve only seen in syndication of course)…but what happens when it’s a plane load of teen beauty queens that crashes on an uncharted tropical island? Will Miss Texas be able to motivate the girls into a sequin and spandex-encased survival team? Will the crash make it more difficult for Miss Nebraska to win Miss Congeniality? Will they ever be able to dislodge the airline tray embedded in Miss New Mexico’s forehead?

Miss Texas – one Taylor Rene Krystal Hawkins – armed with her signature pink lip gloss and channeling G. Gordon Liddy, takes charge from the start. Once organized into two teams: The Sparkle Ponies stay on the beach to help the wounded, while The Lost Girls head into the jungle to look for missing shoes, teeth-bleaching trays and the back half of the airplane.

Throw in a shadowy corporation of sinister characters determined to make sure the girls never go anywhere, some reality show pirate teen boys, and military grade c-4 and you have a book you will never, ever want to put down.

I love funny books. I will be reviewing a lot of them, because, quite frankly, the good ones are hard to find. It was the book’s cover that drew me in. The blonde hair, banner and bandolier of lipsticks spoke to me somehow. There are days when I wish I was armed with an array of power Chanel lipsticks, an intimidating pair of PRADA kitten heels, she-really-means-business Dior mascara and a killer IT bag. Oh the things I could do…

I must admit that I was a little worried at first when I started this book – howling with guilty pleasure at the characterizations of these Miss Teen Dream beauty queens. I was afraid that the girls would be vapid and shallow throughout (BTW, I would’ve finished it no matter what). I needn’t have worried (thus avoiding deep frown lines, thankfully). Ms. Bray does an excellent job of showing the growth of these characters as they follow a dark and delightful story arc. Seeing these girls grow (gasp) hair on their legs, build huts and set up booby traps was more inspirational and fun than having a three-martini luncheon with Tina Fey, Michelle Obama and Lady GaGa.

This is a black comedy and a brilliant satire – which means that some people won’t like it. (Personally, I don’t know who, but there’s always someone.) People die or are dead. Bad guys want to kill nice, teen girls. Not very nice things happen occasionally.

But if you like to laugh out loud while reading and enjoy thinking now and then, you MUST give it a try. I loved BEAUTY QUEENS, and I’m willing to bet my rhinestone, silver-plated tiara that you will too.

Paula McLain’s fictional account of Paris in the glorious 1920s told from Hadley’s viewpoint feels real and authentic. (McLain studied several biographies of Hadley, A Moveable Feast, correspondence between the couple, as well as works by the Hemingways’ friends F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein.) Where Feast is seen through Ernest’s eyes, The Paris Wife tells Hadley’s story – how she loved Ernest, and why she ultimately had to let him go become the great Papa Hemingway.

Hadley met Ernest in Chicago in 1920 when she was 28 and thinking her chance at love had passed her by. Why, by the standards of the day, she was practically an old maid! How surprised she was when this handsome wannabe-writer took an interest in her at her friend’s party. And even more surprised when a letter arrived “Special Delivery” the day after she returned home to St. Louis.

“You on the train and me here and everything emptier now you’re gone. Tell me are you real?”

Wouldn’t you swoon if you read those words in a letter marked “Special Delivery”? I know I would. (Of course, I’d swoon if I received anything handwritten from a fellow – much more romantic than a text or email.)

The book follows the couple as their love burns bright along the Seine, as Ernest struggles to write what’s true on his Corona typewriter, and as Hadley encourages him with every draft and revision. Until Ernest, always looking for the next big thing, moves on, forcing Hadley to let him go.

“I can’t quarrel with you anymore and I can’t see you much either, because it hurts too much. We’ll always be friends – delicate friends, and I’ll love you ’til I die, you know.”

Though the two went on to marry others (Ernest several times), they kept in touch over the years, and it’s obvious from later writings that the love they shared in Paris never went away. Ernest himself said so:

“No one you love is ever truly lost.”

Men, women and children wind in and out of these stories linked and rooted by place. Families take shape from one story to the next, an often gruesome shape, melding into the fabric of the action or serving as a backdrop, a connection, or an explanation of the deep mysteries of human motivation. The tone is pessimistic and sardonic. “The only time life is easy is childhood, but by the time a person realizes this, it’s too damn late.”

Bill paints his law enforcement with the same dark pigment used for his criminals. Even the good guys exhibit flaws, bad behavior, and judgment tainted by personal interest or annihilated by tragedy. Ordinary people fall victim to their vices. Innocence is shattered for no conceivable reason. Children commit violence, are raped and killed. Lives ruined in an instant. Everyone is fair game. It is the rare man who emerges on the other side and no one gets away clean.

The transgressions accumulate like crappie on a fish stringer, so fast that you lose count. In Trespassing Between Heaven and Hell, the breach lays not so heavily in the act as in the cover-up, but once events are set into motion, sin piles upon convenient sin, complicated by the relationship of brothers and the wrecked psyche of a man incapable of leaving war wounds behind him. Already broken people shatter beyond repair.

The aftermath of war figures into The Old Mechanic as well. Perhaps the most compelling story in the collection, the narrative is told from the point of view of an adolescent boy meeting his grandfather for the first time. The boy grew up hearing savage accounts of the man’s behavior. Despite his mother’s misgivings and his own searing fear, the boy goes off alone with the man. The simple words than run through the boy’s head while he accompanies his grandfather to a gun show, to dinner and finally to the old man’s home, elucidate a mixture of repulsion and curiosity, clearly illuminating the irresistible pull of blood and history. In the end, pervasive guilt wracks the grandfather’s existence with hope of only the merest hint of redemption.

The Penance of Scoot McCutcheon is a love story. It’s the accounting of an ordinary home and a happy marriage, told by a doting husband. A young wife described in tender, intimate detail. But it is a love story of the dead and the dying, told in retrospect and tinged with regret. It is the least violent tale here, the crime secondary to an emotionally devastating centerpiece. Haunted by his own actions, a man in perpetual disguise runs from himself for years before surrendering to reckon for his sin, making peace with his own conscience but unable to shake his staggering guilt.

This story collection is an astonishing debut. Bill peppers his writing with generous description, some perfectly rendered, some slightly distracting. Hair and eyes “stained like a walnut”, “flesh giftwrapping bone”, or “Frail would describe her as muscular,” evoke just the right image. Even the few less successful passages bring a definite vision into the mind. Inducing and conveying raw emotion seems almost effortless for Bill, particularly in the case of men in love with their women. The stories race along, visceral, strong, and stunning, transporting the reader into a dirty, dangerous world of drugs, alcohol, incessant violence, and the terminal pastimes of decaying rural life. These people of southern Indiana inhabit an unrelenting hell made up partially of circumstance but primarily crafted from their own design.

Originally published on Kim’s blog

After the sudden death of her father, Jill MacSweeny withdraws from her friends, her boyfriend, and even her newly widowed mother. Her mother’s plan to bring a pregnant young woman into their house in order to adopt the baby seems both inappropriate and doomed to fail. Jill’s subsequent resentment prompts her to finally reach out to others. However, her efforts to reconnect with her boyfriend fail to bring comfort, and her manipulation of an attractive co-worker into investigating the birth mother leaves her confused.

The birth mother, Mandy Kalinowski, is an unusual young woman. Jill dismisses her as a simpleton. A reader initially might conclude that she’s a sociopath. Mandy certainly has kept secrets and manipulated people. But as we become privy to her past and the circumstances leading up to her pregnancy — and as we see how she responds to Mrs. MacSweeny’s trust and Jill’s scorn — we grow to care deeply for Mandy. The question is, will Jill learn to do the same before it’s too late?

I love the character arcs in this book, and the little plot twists and poignant moments that I didn’t see coming (though this was slightly inconvenient for reading on a plane — good thing I had plenty of tissues). Zarr’s prose is gorgeously warm and authentic, and it manages to be so wise without ever seeming heavy-handed or full of itself. (You know what I mean, right?)

I so admire Sara Zarr as a writer and as a person (check out her blog for nuggets of wisdom and reassurance). If you haven’t read any of her books yet, get thee to a library or bookstore this instant!