Emily's Reviews

This novel is an explosion of action, saturated violence, and lush, technicolor imagery. Eiji Miyaki travels to Tokyo to find his father, but what he finds is much larger, and more significant than any one man could ever be. Tokyo almost serves as another character in the novel, providing compact, neon nights and dirty drone-and-MSG-filled days. Murakami-esque and kaleidoscopic.

This is a story about what holds people together, and what happens after lives fall apart. Set in Australia, Jellicoe Road follows Taylor Markham as she fights a teenage territory war, falls in love, and slowly unravels the mystery at the novel's center, the mystery of her own past. You will come to care deeply about the characters and their fates, and there are definitely some tear-jerking moments. 

1Q84 is a two-mooned parallel world where an assassin and a math teacher must find each other before a religious corporation finds them, and creatures called the little people enter existence through a dead goat's mouth. Murakami is a master at juggling seemingly completely unrelated story-lines and making something complicated feel completely cohesive. 

It's well known that Toni Morrison has a powerful voice: Beloved is not only obviously powerful, but is also haunted by a seething, blind subconscious force that has the power to speak with the voice of thousands. It is in essence a ghost story, told with a broken story line where the past and present interweave, and a single, dark event is held under the surface for as long as possible. 

I couldn't shut up about this book for weeks after I read it: I was like one of those people who bring up their new significant other every two seconds. Dave Eggers places his novel in a near/parallel future in some ways more horrifying than that of 1984, and one for which we may have already passed the event horizon. It is a captivating, deceptively light, and deeply important novel.

Looking for Alaska is John Green’s debut novel, and in my opinion his best. If you were ever unhappy as a teenager, then this book is for you. If the dynamic and hilarious characters don’t draw you in, the format of the story will. A countdown pulls you towards a mysterious event at the story’s center, after which everything changes. Moving, witty, and highly funny.