The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons Barron’s own blog. Here are two novels in which key characters are named Gabe. The similarity ends there. The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides is a psychological thriller that plumbs the depth of the human psyche. The simplest narrative – a woman…
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The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons Barron’s own blog. Locker Room Talk: One Woman’s Struggle to Get Inside by Melissa Ludtke is a sports writer’s impressive account of her 1978 lawsuit against Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, who had banned female reporters from interviewing baseball players in the locker…
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The entry below is being cross posted from Majorie Arons Barron’s own blog. Long Island by Colm Toibin is a May, 2024 sequel to his notable 2009 novel Brooklyn and follows its principal characters, Eilis Lacey, an Irish immigrant to Brooklyn in the 1950’s, and her husband Tony Fiorella, a plumber from a robust…
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Satori in Paris by Jack Kerouac. Grove Atlantic (2023), 120 pages, $16 (softcover) Reviewed by David Daniel Seventy years after it started, the Beat Movement continues to hold considerable cultural fascination. Nurtured by its origin-story of Columbia University friendships followed by the famed Six Gallery Reading and the San Francisco…
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Review of The Transcendentalists and Their World Book by Robert A. Gross Review by Richard Howe Most people see history as permanent and fixed in time. Something happened in the past and those in the present tell the story about what happened. Only that’s not what history is or how…
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Lockdown Letters & Other Poems By Paul Marion Review by Richard Howe Sixteen months ago life in Lowell proceeded at its typical late winter pace. It was cold and there was a bit of snow but all indications were that 2020 would be a busy year in the local historical…
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A Book Review by Jack McDonough I spent my entire working life writing and editing copy but I’ve never written fiction. For certain, I’ve never written a novel. But I appreciate good writing and would like to help budding novelists, and even those already published, by sharing examples of remarkable…
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This is No Time To Quit Drinking A novel by Stephen O’Connor A review by Jerry Bisantz. Along with Ann Garvin, Jerry is Artistic Director of Lowell’s Image Theater. A published playwright, he is the author of “Boys at Play”, “Romance 101” and “Memories For Sale” I’ll never forget my…
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I saw Spotlight yesterday at the Lowell Cinema. It’s a very powerful film. The story is well-known but the movie still generated an incredible amount of suspense. While the core of the story is the clergy sexual abuse scandal, the movie is mostly about how it was covered up for…
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I was up late last night, not to watch the Patriots but to finish reading Massacre on the Merrimack, Jay Atkinson’s excellent new book about Hannah Duston and her encounter with Abenaki warriors along the bank of the Merrimack River in March 1697. The 39 year old Duston had just…
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