Review of Life Laid Bare: The Survivors in Rwanda Speak by Jean Hatzfeld

You watch helplessly as a machete hacks off your mother’s head. As her head topples to the ground and rolls to your feet, you brace yourself-for you are next. Jean Hatzfeld’s “Life Laid Bare: The Survivors in Rwanda Speak,” paints such a vivid picture of the Rwanda genocide that you can’t help but believe you are experiencing events in the book firsthand.

Review of The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold

The Almost Moon, Alice Sebold’s second novel, is almost there: almost profound, almost heart wrenching, almost worth reading. Maybe it’s because, like her debut novel, The Lovely Bones, similar motifs crop up: chopped up bodies, bitter and absent mothers, complicated sexual relations. But, unlike The Lovely Bones, Sebold doesn’t take it as far as she needs to; instead, she just tiptoes back over the same issues without the same level of lyricism or gusto.

A Review of Rant: the Oral Biography of Buster Casey by Chuck Palahniuk

A car-crashing rabies-spreading black-toothed inbred redneck puts America on hold by spreading the next human super virus. That’s about all I can explain to you about the plot of Chuck Palahniuk’s newest book, Rant: the Oral Biography of Buster Casey before your head melts and your stomach decides to consume your liver. That, or you would probably shoot me for ruining the most satisfying surprise ending since Fight Club. So be forewarned, there may be spoilers but I’ll try not to make them very obvious. Promise.

Review of What You Have Left by Will Allison

Will Allison’s debut novel, What You Have Left, tracks the everyday struggles of a family in their search for why they never succeeded in having the life they planned for. The novel flawlessly spans 37 years from one decade to the next and back again. It rotates through different endearing speakers in the revelation of why their good intentions and best-laid plans resulted in years of self-destruction and what remains to be salvaged.

A review of Slam by Nick Hornby

Let’s say you were a teenager who got his girlfriend pregnant. Who do you turn to for advice? Why, the infinite wisdom of Tony Hawk, of course. That’s what 16-year-old Sam does in Slam, the latest novel by Nick Hornby. The celebrated author of the male confessional launches into his first young adult novel through Sam’s voice, allowing Hornby to pull off, with relative ease, the reflective but stunted language of the man-child protagonists who fly off the pages of his earlier bestsellers High Fidelity and About a Boy.

Review of The Wild Trees by Richard Preston

How many of us climbed trees in our childhood? Whether swinging from branches or playing in tree houses, youthful imaginations can envision living up in those peaceful realms in the air. As a child you must eventually climb down. With maturity comes the realization of the dangers of climbing such heights and often fear keeps us grounded.

Review of Beneath the Neon: Life and Death in the Tunnels of Las Vegas by Matthew O’Brien

Poverty, drug addiction and homelessness remain prevalent in America’s cities, and the three intersect in .vivid detail in Sin City in Matthew O’Brien’s first-hand account, Beneath the Neon: Life and Death in the Tunnels of Las Vegas. But O’Brien’s framing of his travels through an underground maze of sewer tunnels and drains fails to ever emotionally connect the reader to any of its subjects, leaving the story at best intriguing, at worst boring.

Review of A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Treachery, melodrama, redemption, star-crossed lovers – these are all qualities of every soap opera gracing daytime television. These are also just a few ways to describe Khaled Hosseini’s newest novel A Thousand Splendid Suns. However, Hosseini’s poignant glimpses into the lives of everyday Afghani people and his efforts to enlighten the western world about the Taliban’s heart-wrenching maliciousness completely redeem his effort.

Review of The Intruders by Michael Marshall

When something unexplainable happens to someone you love, you tend to put your heart and soul into finding answers. In Michael Marshall’s chilling, action-packed book, Jack Whalen quickly discovers this to be true. He learns how it feels when nothing is what you think it is and everything is what you thought it could never be. Welcome to The Intruders, a dangerous rollercoaster of a story that you can’t put down until the dead end, when unimaginable things are brought to a disturbing light.

Review of Loving Frank by Nancy Horan

At a time when divorce was scandalous and women in America had not yet obtained the right to vote, intellectual Mamah Borthwick Cheney finds herself involved in an affair with cutting-edge architect Frank Lloyd Wright. She struggles with her role in society, her role in her family and ultimately her role in loving Frank Lloyd Wright. Nancy Horan gives a very human portrayal of the love affair between Borthwick and Wright in her novel Loving Frank.