Book Blog — Robin Gaines

“Books are not only the arbitrary sum of our dreams, and our memory. They also give us the model of self-transcendence.”

—Susan Sontag

SHOW DON’T TELL: STORIES by Curtis Sittenfeld All creative writing students are instructed early on with the same misguided advice to show, don’t tell in their writing. In other words, show me the character is crying without telling me

Robin GainesApril 29, 2025

CRUSH by Ada Calhoun “You’ve got a Lamborghini engine for flirting,” the husband, Paul, tells the unnamed wife at the beginning of this contemporary marriage novel. The narrator is a successful ghostwriter and breadwinner to Paul’s fle

Robin GainesMarch 31, 2025

THE WEDDING PEOPLE by Alison Espach Phoebe Stone checks into the luxurious Newport, Rhode Island hotel wearing a green silk dress and gold heels and carrying no luggage. Everyone at the resort believes she is a guest of the wedding tak

Robin GainesMarch 3, 2025

GOOD MATERIAL by Dolly Alderton Andy’s been dumped by his girlfriend Jen and he spends a good chunk of the novel trying to figure out why. The struggling comedian at thirty-five moves back in with his mom and tries, and tries again to

Robin GainesJanuary 29, 2025

HERE ONE MOMENT by Liane Moriarty What if you knew how and when you would die? Would you change your life in any way? Such is the premise of Moriarty’s latest, Here One Moment. Cherry comes from a line of fortune tellers. During a fl

Robin GainesDecember 31, 2024

DON’T BE A STRANGER by Susan Minot The master storyteller of female desire, Minot’s latest takes the reader on fifty-two-year-old Ivy Cooper’s affair with musician Ansel, almost twenty years younger. Introduced by a mutual friend, the

Robin GainesNovember 29, 2024

TELL ME EVERYTHING by Elizabeth Strout   In Crosby, Maine, Olive Kitteridge is living in a retirement community. Lucy Barton visits, and the two tell stories to one another. Bob is still married to Margaret, but he walks with Lucy

Robin GainesOctober 29, 2024

I’VE TRIED BEING NICE: ESSAYS by Ann Leary It’s a real thing. As a woman of a certain age (I obviously can’t speak for men of a certain age, but I imagine this never pops up in their mental feeds, like ever), one of my regrets is all t

Robin GainesSeptember 30, 2024

SAME AS IT EVER WAS by Claire Lombardo   Lombardo writes sweeping generational family sagas with telling bits of relationships in all their complicated spit and shine. Her first novel, The Most Fun We Ever Had, was equall

Robin GainesAugust 31, 2024

ALL FOURS by Miranda July   Can one person hold two or more identities side by side and skip lanes inside a life? If you’re the narrator in All Fours, the answer is yes. A semi-famous artist from LA leaves her husband and young son

Robin GainesJuly 30, 2024

TRUTH IS THE ARROW, MERCY IS THE BOW: A DIY Manual for the Construction of Stories by Steve Almond The chapter on Writers’ Block is worth the price of the book. But all fifteen essays, from “How to Write Sex Scenes Without Shame” to “T

Robin GainesJune 27, 2024Cult Classic; Sloane Crosley; Real Americans; Rachel Khong; Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow: A DIY Manual for the Construction of Stories; Steve Almond

THE TREE DOCTOR by Marie Mutsuki Mockett   The unnamed narrator of the novel returns to her childhood home in northern California from Hong Kong when the pandemic hits and curtails her plans to return to her husband and two daughte

Robin GainesMay 31, 2024

THE VULNERABLES by Sigrid Nunez Reading The Vulnerables is like taking a long walk with a friend through the streets of New York City during the COVID pandemic. With pared-down and graceful prose, Nunez explores what the human heart

Robin GainesApril 30, 2024Diane Seuss; Modern Poetry; The Gin Closet; Leslie Jamison; Sigrid Nunez; The Vulnerables

THE BEE STING by Paul Murray In 2008 the Barnes family, once one of the wealthiest in their small Irish village, is struck by the financial crash, and the family cracks in their staid exterior begin to show. Dickie, the father, runs th

Book ReviewsRobin GainesMarch 29, 2024Splinters; Leslie Jamison; The Berry Pickers; Amanda Peters; The Bee Sting; Paul Murray

WELLNESS by Nathan Hill   It is a big, ambitious novel about all the different people we inhabit in a lifetime. Some are in the same suit of armor; others are reinventing themselves repeatedly. This is the story of Elizabeth and Ja

Book ReviewsRobin GainesFebruary 26, 2024Martyr!; Kaveh Akbar; Horse; Geraldine Brooks; Wellness; Nathan Hill

AMERICAN ENDING by Mary Kay Zuravleff Feisty and curious Yelena wonders how life will turn out for her: an American ending of hope and promise, or the endless heartache of a Russian one? Born in a Pennsylvania coal mining town to Russi

Robin GainesJanuary 21, 2024

DEMON COPPERHEAD by Barbara Kingsolver It’s the early aughts and opioids are passed out like candy in the small rural confines of Appalachia. Demon’s parents are both dead and he gets passed around through the flawed and scary system o

Robin GainesJanuary 21, 2024We Run the Tides; Vendela Vida; The Hundred-Year House; Rebecca Makkai; Demon Copperhead; Barbara Kingsolver

Book ReviewsRobin GainesDecember 31, 2023Franks: Sonnets; Diane Seuss; Mary Kay Zuravleff; American Ending; Heidi Julavits; Directions to Myself

THE FOLDED CLOCK: A DIARY by Heidi Julavits I loved this dip into the psyche of a writer I have never read, but after finishing this diary, I ordered everything else she’s published. Witty, acerbic, laugh-out-loud funny, and intimate a

Robin GainesNovember 30, 2023The Folded Clock; Heidi Julavits; Happiness Falls; Angie Kim; Daughter; Claudia Dey

LOVE & TROUBLE: A MIDLIFE RECKONING by Claire Dederer The mother of two preteens and happily married to the same man for seventeen years, Dederer finds her libido wrestled awake and compares the experience to when she was coming of

Robin GainesNovember 8, 2023Edan Lepucki; Time's Mouth; Claire Dederer; Love & Trouble; The Angel of Rome: And Other Stories; Jess Walter