Weekly Reviews

The Barrowfields

By Phillip Lewis

4 stars

This book is summarized as a coming of age tale reminiscent of Wolfe and Styron (neither of whose books I have read) but to me this had a gothic feel with a decrepit mountain mansion with overflowing libraries and a desperate father with outsize literary ambitions.   The writing was superb with a multitude of literary references and interesting characters.  My only issue is that I didn’t always get a good grasp of the character’s motivations and the decisions they made and due to an extremely slow paced plot, more focus is turned onto the characters themselves making their actions front and center.  Overall, though, this is an engaging book and one that I found myself heavily highlighting.  I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy

By Ta-Nehisi Coates

Publication Date - October 3, 2017

4.5 stars

During the eight years of Barak Obama’s presidency, Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote for The Atlantic.  This is a collection of that writing along with more current essays prefacing each one.  I’m not sure I can do justice to how important , and timely (although sadly this kind of collection is always timely), is this book.  Coates does not suppress his criticism, disappointment and anger at the Obama Presidency and how it should have changed more for race relations than actually happened.  I don’t subscribe to The Atlantic so this is all new material for me, but even if these articles are rereads, it is worth it just for the commentary before each one.  I received a digital ARC of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.