🏆 The Leavers: A National Book Award Finalist Novel Review

The last book I read that bad, The Stieglitz, won a Pulitzer Prize. It was a collection of shady characters involved in endless booze and failed drug trips. When the author finally stopped boring me, she ended up with an unnecessary and insulting nihilistic essay. Apparently the Pulitzer Prize is not very high. The same applies to this "award-winning" book. There are probably no editors left in the world. Who could allow so many chapters to begin without making it clear who was speaking. Once…

Our son grew up with an Asian-born boy who was adopted as an infant by a middle-class American family. He had very nice parents and an adoptive sister of a different race. Our son told us that the boy was sad, wondering why his mother left him and how he struggled with being the only Asian in school. There was always something sad about the boy. I thought of this boy-turned-man as I read Lisako's debut novel The Graduates. The book is an exciting journey into the life of Deming/Daniel, a…

Lisa Ko's Graduates is my book of the month pick this month, but I'll be honest when I say I didn't pick it as one of my book of the month have month. There were already 3 options in my box so I picked it myself when it came out. I'm glad I did because this book got me thinking, it touched my soul, and it was just a wonderful read, even amidst difficult subjects. The book begins with Deming Goh and his mother, Polly. They live with relatives in a tiny apartment in New York and life is a…