Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand

Rating:   Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, by Helen Simonson. Random House (2011), 353 pages. I borrowed this from a friend with the understanding that it is a quiet story about two old widowed people falling in love, which admittedly doesn’t sound terribly...
The Darkest Child

The Darkest Child

(This review first appeared in November 2006) Rating:  The Darkest Child, by Delores Phillips. Soho Press (2004), 387 pages. This is a very well-written and disturbing (in a good way) novel that does not deserve its ugly cover. The boring stock photo of a...
Pharmakon

Pharmakon

Rating:  Pharmakon…or the Story of a Happy Family, by Dirk Wittenborn. Penguin Books (2008), 404 pages. The father in this novel is a psychology professor at Yale who has determined that his route to fame and fortune will be his invention of a pill to cure...