Book Reviews — 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

Posts in Book Reviews

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

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

PERFECT TUNES by Emily Gould Laura leaves her midwestern hometown after college for NYC to find success as a musician. It’s the late 90s and early aughts. With her roommate, Callie, they form the band, The Groupies. But, after a tragi

Book ReviewsRobin GainesNovember 16, 2022

LATE IN THE DAY by Tessa Hadley This novel was my first foray into Hadley’s fictional worlds, and it won’t be my last. The novel opens with the death of one of the four main characters, Zach. His death shakes loose the four main charac

Book ReviewsRobin GainesAugust 24, 2022You Have a Friend in 10A; Maggie Shipstead; Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative; Melissa Febos; Late in the Day; Tessa Hadley; Ghost Lover: Stories; Lisa Taddeo

OH WILLIAM! By Elizabeth Strout From the author of Olive Kitteridge and My Name is Lucy Barton comes Oh William! —a novel continuum of Lucy’s life as a famous novelist and her strange relationship dance with her first husband, Wil

Book ReviewsRobin GainesMay 5, 2022Lily King; Five Tuesdays in Winter; Renata Adler; Speedboat; Mouth to Mouth; Antoine Wilson; Elizabeth Strout; Oh

ON EARTH WE’RE BRIEFLY GORGEOUS by Ocean Vuong I had heard so much about this novel and put it off because, along with the sad subject matter (the world is sad, so get over it), I was warned you will read and then read again each s

Book ReviewsRobin GainesMarch 21, 2022Miriam Toews, Fight Night, Objects of Desire, Clare Sestanovich, Who is Maud Dixon, Alexandra Andrews, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong

CRYING IN H MART by Michelle Zauner Zauner, the frontperson for the band, Japanese Breakfast, writes about her relationship with her dying mother, her Korean identity, and food with equal parts rebellion, curiosity, and familial love.

Book ReviewsRobin GainesFebruary 7, 2022

KEEP MOVING: NOTES ON LOSS, CREATIVITY, AND CHANGE by Maggie Smith A small gem of a book that cheerleads the energy within all of us to create change. If you know someone depleted, discouraged, and depressed in your life, this book mig

Book ReviewsRobin GainesNovember 9, 2021Lost Children Archive, Bluets, Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change, Wayward, Dana Spiotta, Valeria Luiselli, Maggie Smith, Maggie Nelson

There’s something visceral about reading about a place, atmosphere, history, the people living in another country while you’re in said country traveling, traveling, traveling. The writer, Shirley Hazzard, spent years in Italy. Sh

Book ReviewsRobin GainesOctober 7, 2021

We are our memory, we are that chimerical museum of shifting shapes, that pile of broken mirrors.—Jorge Luis Borges THE SEVEN HUSBANDS OF EVELYN HUGO by Taylor Jenkins   Reid This was a book club selection, and the discussion

Book ReviewsRobin GainesAugust 7, 2021Animal, Lisa Taddeo, Joan Silber, Secrets of Happiness, The Plot, Jean Hanff Korelitz, Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

THE CARRYING by Ada Limon I have been reading a ton of poetry in the year of COVID. Discovering a new poem or poet is the one thing I look forward to every morning when my eyelids open. Who will deliver me out of this fre

Book ReviewsRobin GainesFebruary 25, 2021

"There’s just something beautiful about walking on snow that nobody else has walked on. It makes you believe you’re special."  –  Carol Rifka Brunt, "Tell the Wolves I'm Home" ABANDON ME: Memoirs by Melissa Febos The wri

Book ReviewsRobin GainesDecember 17, 2020

MONOGAMY by Sue Miller It’s not a stretch to guess what this novel is about. A long, happily married couple, the envy of friends and family because of their abundant love for one another, comes under a microscope of anger and disbelief

Book ReviewsRobin GainesNovember 2, 2020

Marriage is neither heaven nor hell; it is simply purgatory.—Abraham Lincoln SEA WIFE by Amity Gaige I found a new favorite writer. Sea Wife had been sitting on the TBR pile all summer. I don’t know what I expected, but it blew

Book ReviewsRobin GainesSeptember 23, 2020

Summer Book Reviews: 2 of 3

Summer Book Reviews: 2 of 3

Book ReviewsRobin GainesAugust 25, 2020

Summer Book Reviews: 1 of 3

Summer Book Reviews: 1 of 3

Book ReviewsRobin GainesAugust 6, 2020Julia Alvarez; Afterlife; Ernest J. Gaines; A Lesson Before Dying; Laura Zigman; Separation Anxiety

Spring Book Reviews: 2 of 3

Spring Book Reviews: 2 of 3

Book ReviewsRobin GainesMay 23, 2020Spring Book Reviews, The Jetsetters; Amanda Eyre Ward; Cleanness; Garth Greenwell; My Sister the Serial Killer; Oyinkan Braithwaite; Father of the Rain; Lily King

Spring Book Reviews 1 of 3

Spring Book Reviews 1 of 3

Book ReviewsRobin GainesApril 26, 2020

Winter Book Reviews: 2 of 3

Winter Book Reviews: 2 of 3

Book ReviewsRobin GainesMarch 3, 2020Elizabeth Strout, Ann Napolitano, Dear Edward, Olive, Olive Again, Whence and Whither, Thomas Lynch