jenknox's Reviews (494)

Karr's hard-edged poetic voice made The Liars' Club one of my favorite books. In Lit, the voice is just as searing and lovely but perhaps not as consistent. The childhood digressions--nods to her previous works--were the weakest portions of the narrative, but they were brief; moreover, they were easily forgiven when bookmarking transcendent scenes such as one in which a group of illiterate women remind the author of the universality of good poetry. I highly recommend this book to all readers, but notably writers and anyone consumed by art. This is a book for writers and artists, from a poet known for her prose.

Delicately and precisely narrated, The Reluctant Fundamentalist is an important book that offers perspective and illumination on the multifaceted danger of extreme political divide. A book to read when we most need it (which is all the time).

Some authors have a way of making a reader forget the world, forget that she's reading, allowing pure enjoyment of the art of story. This is especially difficult to pull off with reading author/teachers. We feel the pull to be critical, cautious, and read with our defenses up, ready to find something that jostles us from the narrative. Very few authors have the ability to make such a reader forget, and even fewer flash fiction and short fiction writers have this ability because the form means creating numerous worlds and engaging the reader wholly again with each new story. Some authors can do it, though. Kathy Fish is one. This book is a gift for a reader like me.