Jonathan Strong's A CIRCLE AROUND HER is deceptively simple: a novel organized around a divorced middle-aged woman, Mary Lanaghan; her four children; her ex-husband and possible lovers; her friends; her neighbors in a Massachusetts community that is far from Boston ... almost. But beneath this transparent surface is a profound sense of time passing that recalls the worlds of Dorothea Brooke in MIDDLEMARCH and of Clarissa Dalloway. Whether it is the very fat neighbors, or the two gay men who run the local diner and the many locals who frequent it, or the marvelously individualized Lanaghan children, this novel offers some of the most generously rendered characters in contemporary fiction. They stand before us, warts and all, gloriously human and slyly beyond our typing of them, in a novel that begins on a Monday in May and ends on a Sunday in November, and always refuses the easily novelistic. This sense of time passing, in human life and in our daily history, provides much of the psychological layering that makes the characters so richly there and elusive, in a novel of rich compassion and sly humor and luminous prose. Strong has written other fine novels (AN UNTOLD TALE especially). A CIRCLE AROUND HER is something more, a picture of a woman and those around her in a "world [with] possibilities for beauty ... and nearly as many for disappointment."

It is a pleasure to read Jonathan Strong's *The Haunts of His Youth.* *Haunts* features the stories and novella that originally appeared in his first book (*Tike and Five Stories*) as well as several acclaimed pieces that he wrote in the seventies. These stories work under a quiet pressure that simmers for pages at a time. In "Quimby," everything is aglow, whether it be the lovely jar of fireflies that rests on the young narrator's nightstand, the lost pearl that he finds in the bushes, or the Fourth of July sparklers that brighten the night. In "Suburban Life," the reader can almost feel Davey's sunburn, can almost taste the halved grapefruit that Davey's girlfriend eats with heartbreaking sensuality. The suspended eroticism of "Zwillingsbruder" is tantalizing. This story is most interesting for its dialogue, which is printed as if part of a staged play. With this story, Strong invites the reader into a world of frustration and longing not unlike that of Joyce's *Dubliners.* Strong's penultimate story, "Tike's Days," is the book's highlight. This novella brings the reader into Tike's world of displacement, beautiful women, and German opera. Buy *The Haunts of His Youth*: it is an extraordinary introduction to this prolific writer's work, and you'll want to read more.

Jonathan Franzen's STRONG MOTION is one of the most original books I've read in years.
At its most basic level, STRONG MOTION is the love story of Louis Holland and a brilliant seismologist, Renee Seitchek and of strange happenings in Boston.
Ambitious, imaginative and quirky, Franzen successfully weaves moral, social and environmental issues into a complex, wry, intriguing and often humorous story about family and love.
STRONG MOTION along with the excellent reviews Franzen has received for his latest book THE CORRECTIONS (the current Oprah pick), should make Jonathan Franzen recognizable as an original voice for the decade.

I read The Corrections first and loved it, so I wasn't expecting as much out of Strong Motion, but it was a nice surprise. I had the same problem as another reviewer - inability to put the book down to go to sleep at night. I started out expecting to dislike the characters I ended up liking. I know zero about petrology, science - but it was still interesting, and the characters are well drawn and likably flawed. Franzen throws interesting phrases into the most routine sentence - describing earthquake damage, he said a house was "incontinent of bricks." You don't want to skip anything.

With Strong Motion, Franzen takes his place in the smart young writer pantheon along luminaries such as David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest, duh) and Richard Price. This book contains more compelling insights about what it is like to be a dorky, disaffected, intelligent young person then a whole truck load of other books with similar goals. That being said, this book is also pretty "heavy" in that Franzen is not afraid to abandon the ironic detachment so common in young writers. But no matter. If you are even here, reading this review, it is obvious that you will like this book. Read it.

I would say this is a pretty acruate story of the Offspring, it has its ups and down, but a good read, that i would recomend to any Offspring fan.