Sample Saturday is when I wade through the eleventy billion samples I have downloaded on my Kindle. I’m slowly chipping away and deciding whether it’s buy or bye.
The Burrow by Melanie Cheng
Summary: Amy, Jin and Lucie are leading isolated lives in their partially renovated, inner city home. They are not happy, but they are also terrified of change. When they buy a pet rabbit for Lucie, and then Amy’s mother, Pauline, comes to stay, the family is forced to confront long-buried secrets.
I’m thinking: Yes.
City on Fire by Garth Risk Hallberg
Summary: New York City, 1976. Regan and William Hamilton-Sweeney are the estranged heirs to one of the city’s great fortunes; Keith and Mercer, the men who, for better or worse, love them; Charlie and Samantha, two suburban teenagers seduced by downtown’s punk scene; an obsessive magazine reporter and his idealistic neighbor—and the detective trying to figure out what any of them have to do with a shooting in Central Park on New Year’s Eve. And the blackout of July 13, 1977, changes everything.
I’m thinking: No (it’s the length… 950pp).
A Reason to See You Again by Jami Attenberg
Summary: The women of the Cohen family are in crisis, triggered by the death of their patriarch, Rudy. Shelly, the younger of the two Cohen sisters, runs off to the West Coast to immerse herself in the emerging and lucrative world of technology. Her sister, Nancy, marries a traveling salesman with a shadowy lifestyle, while their mother, Frieda, hurls herself into a boozy, troubled existence in Miami. But each learn in different ways that running from the past can’t save you.
I’m thinking: Yes.
The Attenberg is great. So is the Hallberg, but I understand your reservations about the length. I managed to get sucked into it and read 50 pages at a pop such that it didn’t take me that long. I’m also very interested in The Burrow. I think it was just released in the US, so it’s getting more widespread acclaim.
I caved when I saw The Burrow available on my library’s audio list and borrowed it today (ask, and the universe delivers!). Probably a book that it better read than listened to, but I’ll see how I go.
Just about to post my review of The burrow now, and came here to see if you’d reviewed it, and link to it. After all it’s about grief! It’s up your alley. I think you’ll like it.