By Reagan Henderson
In Bayou Pages
Feb 2nd, 2026
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823 Views
REVIEW BY MEREDITH MCKINNIE “Happiness is a choice as much as anything. Or you could choose to be angry, and if you stay angry long enough, it will become comfortable, like an old robe.” As a newcomer to Elizabeth Strout, I belatedly realized the existing lives of the characters in Tell Me Everything...
By Reagan Henderson
In Bayou Pages
Dec 1st, 2025
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717 Views
REVIEW BY MEREDITH MCKINNIE Claire Lombardo’s second novel Same As It Ever Was is a compelling portrayal of middle age life in a typical upper-class family. Julia Ames is now approaching 60. Her husband Mark still lovingly adores and desires her, son Ben is finding his own way at 24, and teenage daug...
By Reagan Henderson
In Bayou Pages
Oct 31st, 2025
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1400 Views
review by Meredith McKinnie “The wonder is that you could start life with nothing, end with nothing, and lose so much in between.” In the summer of 2024, NYTimes readers chose Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead as the best book of the 21st century, and I can see why. Channeling Charles Dickens’ Da...
By Reagan Henderson
In Bayou Pages
Oct 31st, 2025
0 Comments
657 Views
Review By Meredith Mckinnie Adichie’s layered novel opens in an African barbershop in Trenton, New Jersey, where Ifemelu has traversed several trains to have her hair braided, a luxury/burden in America. While enduring the multi-hour process, Adichie emails her old boyfriend Obinze that she is moving...
By Reagan Henderson
In Bayou Pages
Oct 1st, 2025
0 Comments
1596 Views
REVIEW BY MEREDITH MCKINNIE “Life didn’t just get better and better. You could actually miss out on something and that was that. That was your chance and now it was over.” Miranda July’s romp of an autofiction novel is absurd, titillating, and for lack of a better term, off the rails. Needless to say...
By Reagan Henderson
In Bayou Pages
Oct 1st, 2025
0 Comments
886 Views
REVIEW BY MEREDITH MCKINNIE “I soon realized that inevitability of every relationship: the things which initially draw you to each other become the exact things that irritate you the most.” As a mid-thirties struggling comedian, Andy’s at the universal impasse – recently dumped and not knowing ...
By Reagan Henderson
In Bayou Pages
Aug 28th, 2025
0 Comments
960 Views
REVIEW BY MEREDITH MCKINNIE “History is a merciless judge. It lays bare our tragic blunders and foolish missteps and exposes our most intimate secrets, wielding the power of hindsight like an arrogant detective who seems to know the end of the mystery from the outset.” Martin Scorsese’s 2023 film Kil...
By Reagan Henderson
In Bayou Pages
Aug 28th, 2025
0 Comments
528 Views
REVIEW BY MEREDITH MCKINNIE “Marriage is not a ritual or an end. It is a long, intricate, intimate dance together and nothing matters more than your own sense of balance and your choice of partner.” After hearing about Amy Bloom’s memoir, how her writing is the kind of composition a writer dreams of,...
By Reagan Henderson
In Bayou Pages
Jul 30th, 2025
0 Comments
955 Views
REVIEW BY MEREDITH MCKINNIE “Like everyone else, she got only one life. The one she was living right now. This life that could only have happened with every experience she’d ever had – that had landed her here, in this perfect moment.” If you enjoy immersing yourself in novels about the rich an...
By Reagan Henderson
In Bayou Pages
Jul 30th, 2025
0 Comments
579 Views
REVIEW BY MEREDITH MCKINNIE “Humans are the only species who subvert truth for their own entertainment. They call them jokes. Sometimes puns.” In Shelby Van Pelt’s debut novel Remarkably Bright Creatures, we meet Marcellus, the Giant Pacific octopus, who lives in an aquarium on the West Coast. You go...
