ajmatt blog

I’ve been looking for a venue to jot down thoughts on the books I read. My reviews don’t fit Amazon or LibraryThing, and both seem like very public places to post. So I decided to post them here, to a comfortably sized audience.

Jamestown: A Novel by Matthew Sharpe.

This book jumped off the “new” shelf and into my arms at my local library. I thought it was a historical look at Jamestown, Virginia, but it turned out to be post-apocalyptic story with historical characters. I suppose the skyscrapers on the cover should have tipped me off.

I like a nice end-of-world-story, so I read it anyway. Or tried to—I made it about halfway through. I love the concept, and really wanted to get sucked in and race to the end, but once Sharpe moved into multiple voices (more than Rolfe and Pocahontas) I lost interest. Despite my failure to finish, I can image others liking the story, so I’ll recommend it.

The Keep by Jennifer Egan

Reviews of this book were not good, and I had fairly low expectations at the beginning. But what a perfect, bizarre story it turned out to be.

The combination of castles, ghosts, prisons, and a cast of unlikable characters ripped me through, and the plot lingered well after I put the book down. The lasting impression was the newness of it all—while Egan used some familiar literary devices, the novel had an element of obscurity that I found pleasing. It twisted, turned, ran off the road and made me cringe, but always in a good way.

If you read The Keep, Diane Rehm’s interview with Egan is worth a listen.