D. M. Papuga's profile

Book Review: Susannah, A Lawyer by Ruth Rymer, October 5, 2009

Rape. Sexual Harassment. Deeply ingrained, gender-based social mores. Victim blaming. The Denial of a woman's identity. Trafficking in women (daughters) for social and economic advancement. Any one of these topics could be the subject of a lengthy body of work, but Ruth Rymer manages to draw all of the most common challenges facing women in the 19th century into Susannah's journey from the halls of Mount Holyoke to the defendant's chair, to a seat in one of the top firms in Chicago to read law before taking the bar exam. In Susannah, A Lawyer, Ruth Rymer manages to bring to life the complex world of intelligent women in a time where attending college was for meeting… Read more

Book Review: Engleby by Sebastian Faulks, January 6, 2008

"I decided not to be mad any more; I was never going back to a place like that again."
Engleby, pg. 191



Audiences love underdogs and surprises. They also love the formulaic nature of entertainment. Readers, even if they've never encountered the term "archetype," recognize signature character types when they see them. Conventional literary signposts clue readers in on who to root for, who the good guys are, and who should be wearing the black hat. In Engleby, Sebastian Faulks turns conventional character development on its ear and, like Nabokov did with Humbert Humbert in Lolita, forces the audience to invest in a protagonist who is detestable, yet… Read more

Book Review: The List by Tara Ison, September 9, 2007

Folk wisdom about love proclaims that opposites, like magnets, attract. Tara Ison's second novel, The List, depicts the obstacles and darkly comic circumstances of two opposites trying repeatedly to tear themselves apart. Isabel, a gifted heart surgeon about to begin her residency, and Al, a video store clerk and director whose only film turned into a cult-classic, are involved in a toxic relationship where neither of them is capable of breaking the cycle of enabling the other's destructive behavior. In a vain attempt to bring her chaotic personal life into the kind of black and white order her career contains, Isabel and Al create a list of things they always talked about doing together… Read more