“I insure life, health, and happiness.” As part of my in-depth review of every Twilight Zone episode, I finally got my hands on an old copy of the short story “What You Need” by Lewis Padgett. Interestingly enough, the name “Lewis Padgett” was actually a joint nom de plume used…
Goosebumps Review #24: Phantom of the Auditorium (1994) by R.L. Stine
“A mysterious phantom haunted our school…” Woods Mill Middle School sixth graders, Brooke Rodgers and her best friend Zeke Matthews, are horror movie fanatics. Brooke wears glasses and has an allergic problem that causes her to sneeze at inopportune moments. Their moms initially met at a bowling league one day…
1999 Pulitzer Prize Review: The Hours by Michael Cunningham
“Love is deep, a mystery –who wants to understand its every particular?” (143). An homage to Virginia Woolf’s 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway, Michael Cunningham’s fourth novel The Hours (which won a string accolades, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1999) was initially intended…
1998 Pulitzer Prize Review: American Pastoral by Philip Roth
“He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach – that it makes no sense.” Seymour “The Swede” Levov is the perfect image of American success. He is tall, strong, muscular, athletic, blond-haired, fair-skinned –an archetypal “Swede” (who is able to pass as though he is not Jewish). In…