All Posts by Marvin Fein

The best Jane Austen book that Jane Austen didn’t write and if Austen had, it may be her best novel. Two fiftyish sisters and their mother are all forced for various reasons to leave Manhattan and share their cousin’s ramshackle cottage while they sort out individual and family issues and find new lives for...
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If you like Leo Tolstoy, Helen Mirren or Christopher Plummer, you will love this movie. And even if you don’t like any of them, you will enjoy seeing how flower children first blossomed on Tolstoy’s farm and not a farm in Woodstock.  Pre-order The Last Station on Amazon.
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Probably the best novel ever written about Ethiopia and the overthrow of Haille Sallasie (not faint praise considering that the very talented Abraham Verghase also recently tackled this subject). Each character is interesting, fully formed and brings a different perspective to the historical events. Buy Beneath the Lion’s Gaze on Amazon or download the...
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A must read about one New Orleans family’s struggles before, during and after Katrina. One of those rare instances in which an author’s narrative and not his or her polemics allows the reader to feel deeply about the effects on individuals of injustice, hope and religion. Buy Zeitoun on Amazon or download audiobook from...
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For anyone out there who likes the Nick Hornby style of infiltrating pop music references into his narrative, read Tom Perrotta’s early novel “The Wishbones“. Also for any of you who don’t like Hornsby’s books, it is more interesting than his books.
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When I think of epic historical novels, I usually think that they are too long and poorly edited (that is probably redundant). I also expect them to cover several generations, some of which are rather uninteresting and several decades and events, many of which have no need to be remembered or romanticized. So when...
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In John Updike’s “The Witches of Eastwick“, Joe Marino was an important character. He resurfaced in an ancillary way in Updike’s recent sequel “The Widows of Eastwick” (excellent book). Joe Marino in the books was a plumber. Once again art was ahead of life.
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