Before I post the review for today, I just want to mention that my young adult novel, Friends Forever, is being featured at Coffee Time Romance & More. If you have not visited that site before, it is a terrific place to find new books to read. Most of the books featured are romance, but there are some other genres spotlighted now and then as well. Today, young adult fiction is featured, and I am grateful for all the folks at Coffee Time for their support of authors. Jamie Hill, one of the amazing partners at Books We Love Publishing, is blogging about the author spotlight today, so if you have time, hop over and see what she has to say.
Now, before anyone calls me on a mistake, I do need to clarify that the title “there was an old woman” is not capitalized as that is the way it appears on the book. It might be interesting to know why the publisher decided to do that, but they might not be telling. (smile) I do want to thank Carl for sharing reviews that we are free to use on our blogs, and hope that you will thank him, too, by checking out his books.
there was an old woman
by Hallie Ephron
ISBN: 978-0-06-211760-1
A William Morrow 2013 release
304 pages
I could hardly put it down. Creepy, tension filled, elegantly crafted, filled with emotional turmoil and characters that seem to rise from the pages and sit beside you while you read. Not a mystery in the usual sense, not a novel of slam-bang adventure with bodies dropping on every other page. This elegantly crafted novel demonstrates a mastery of story-telling, of how to feed tidbits of information to the reader in a way that not only keeps one glued to the book, but step-by-step raises gut-wrenching questions of life and death and reality.
Somehow, Ephron has plumbed the dark recesses of the mind of an elderly woman named Mina Yetner. Independent still at ninety-one, and living in a small New York City neighborhood on the edge of a salt marsh, she’s sound of mind if physically frail and she’s determined to live out her life as she has always done, to the very end. Mina is a wonderful fresh character and readers shouldn’t be surprised if her voice comes, unbidden to mind while they turn the pages.
In this time of aging baby boomers, of rising concerns about privacy, rampant mortgage offers, retail development, and uncertain government, here is a universal crime novel that should be read by just about everybody on the planet.
Well, you sold me. I’m adding this one to my TBR list.