Contemporary Archive

  Funny story about my acquisition of this book. I was at the Hobart Book Village snooping around the shops and I kept seeing this book. Because I couldn’t go home with five bookstores worth of merchandise (and I was going a little wild that day),

  I’ve seen this novel floating around used bookstores so I picked it up while visiting the Hobart Book Village. I was intrigued by the title – Everything Beautiful Began After.

  I feel a bit conflicted about this book of short stories. The collection comprises eight stories, two of which were very strong. The others, not so much. I’m going to be purposefully wishy-washy in this review because that’s how I felt about this collection.

  This book received a lot of press when it came out in 2011. Jeffrey Eugenides had received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, as well as a bunch of other awards, in 2003 for his second novel, Middlesex (which is fantastic).

  I think Swamplandia! is one of those books that critics loved (it was the New York Times Book Review’s Ten Best Books of the Year) but readers are not as convinced.

Nick Dunne’s wife goes missing from their rented Missouri McMansion one afternoon. Transplanted New Yorkers, the couple moved to Nick’s hometown after losing their magazine/publishing jobs and to also care for Nick’s ailing mother and father. The story is told from both Nick’s and Amy’s perspectives. Sneaky and deceptive, the reader needs

Have you read Jhumpa Lahiri? Because you should. I’ve read three books by her this year – two collections of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies and Unaccustomed Earth, and her 2003 novel, The Namesake – and she has quickly become one of my favorite authors.

I read this novel a few years ago when it first came out and re-read it recently because I wanted to review it for the blog. In case you’ve read it and were confused by the ending, or if you’re going to read it, I’ll let you in on a secret: it’s