By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Apr 30th, 2025
0 Comments
1215 Views
review by Meredith McKinnie “We don’t have children to fulfill our dreams. Children allow us to let go of the dreams we were never meant to fulfill.” In Abraham Verghese’s sweeping new novel The Covenant of Water, the real-life physician, turned author, takes us into the story of three generations on...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Mar 28th, 2025
0 Comments
874 Views
review by Meredith McKinnie “The only way to understand the world as something other than a tale of loss is to see it as a tale of change.” Daniel Mason’s novel North Woods is more than simply the history of a place. It is the telling of American history and the American people’s history situated [&h...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Mar 28th, 2025
0 Comments
938 Views
review by Meredith McKinnie “Some people spend their entire lives waiting for the time to be right to make an improvement.” Like so many of us, spring brings feelings of renewal and self-assessment. Along with decluttering my environment, I begin to evaluate my behaviors. James Clear’s book Atomic Ha...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Feb 28th, 2025
0 Comments
1623 Views
review by Meredith McKinnie “Good marriages are never as interesting as bad affairs.” It’s rare that I indulge books that I know my mother-in-law will love, but Ann Patchett’s new feel-good novel is definitely one of them. It’s technically a pandemic novel, but not in how you might think. Lara Nelson...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Jan 30th, 2025
0 Comments
1433 Views
REVIEW BY MEREDITH MCKINNIE “I don’t want to tell you what happened. I want to tell you how it felt.” The aforementioned opening words of Namwali Sherpell’s new novel, chilling and ambiguous, suggest a confessional of sorts, a dive into the abyss of emotion that follows a tragic loss. And that would ...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Jan 30th, 2025
0 Comments
1727 Views
REVIEW BY MEREDITH MCKINNIE “There is so much freedom in being anonymous.” When Britney Spears’ first album Baby One More Time dropped in 1999, her face and song by the same name were everywhere. She dominated the radio, MTV, and Total Request Live, the daily video show of top songs in the country. E...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Jan 3rd, 2025
0 Comments
658 Views
REVIEW BY MEREDITH MCKINNIE “But at least she was married to the smartest, funniest man she had ever met, and that counted for everything…” In keeping with my current fascination with historical fiction, I anxiously cracked the new spine of Gill Paul’s 2022 novel The Manhattan Girls. I was intrigued ...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Jan 3rd, 2025
0 Comments
941 Views
REVIEW BY MEREDITH MCKINNIE “The first weapon I ever held was my mother’s hand.” I didn’t so much fall in love with Jesmyn Ward’s novels as I did with the power of Ward’s writing. She tackles hard, gritty subject matter, exposing the underbelly of American reality, and in this novel American history,...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Oct 31st, 2024
0 Comments
617 Views
review by Meredith McKinnie “I wanted to see who I was, without using another person’s love for me as a measurement of my value.” When I think of Jessica Simpson, I first think of the MTV show Newlyweds, in which she and then-husband Nick Lachey documented their first year of marriage, only to divorc...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Oct 1st, 2024
0 Comments
684 Views
review by Meredith McKinnie “Every time I remember that my mother is dead, it feels like I’m colliding with a wall that won’t give. There’s no escape, just a hard surface that I keep ramming over and over, a reminder of the immutable reality that I will never see her again.” Michelle Zauner’s meditat...
