Book Review for APRICOTS IN A TURKISH GARDEN by Carrie Jane Knowles

Title: Apricots in a Turkish Garden
Author: Carrie Jane Knowles
Publisher: Second Wind Publishing, LLC
Genre: Short Stories
ISBN: 978-1630661090

Apricots in a Turkish Garden

by Carrie Jane Knowles

Book review by Nicole Eva Fraser

Carrie Knowles is a great writer, pure and simple, and her gifts shine in this collection of short stories with a crazy-quilt of characters we can recognize and identify with. In her stories, conversations are key—imagine! People talking face-to-face and on the telephone to each other! People conversing at length without their minds and eyes wandering to their smart phones! Knowles brings her individual characters, their relationships, and their realities to life so richly, through her heart for people’s stories and her ear for real conversations. What impresses me most is that the stories flow so naturally, without hiccups, false notes, or contrivances. Knowles wields her writing prowess quietly and effortlessly. These stories brought me back to the land of the living.

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Nicole Eva Fraser received her MFA in creative writing from NEOMFA consortium in northeast Ohio, and graduated summa cum laude from Baldwin-Wallace College with a double major in English and communications. She is an adult-literacy activist in Cleveland, Tanzania and Malawi. She runs 10Ks (slowly), used to speak French, and often can be found putting her foot in her mouth. Fraser is the author of It’s the Hardest Thing in the World and I Don’t Think It’s that Simple.

 

Book Review for APRICOTS IN A TURKISH GARDEN by Carrie Jane Knowles

Title: Apricots in a Turkish Garden
Author: Carrie Jane Knowles
Publisher: Second Wind Publishing, LLC
Genre: Short Stories
ISBN: 978-1630661090

Apricots in a Turkish Garden

by Carrie Jane Knowles

Book review by Dene Hellman

The ten stories told in Apricots in a Turkish Garden are penetrating explorations of sensitive relationships that try the souls of their participants. Carrie Knowles writes each with a perceptive voice that takes no prisoners. Mothers and daughters cope with Alzheimer’s; a daughter grows up adjusting and readjusting to her father’s blindness; a woman dismays her relatives with her determination to find family ties to Clint Eastwood. It isn’t a stretch to think we must have met all of Knowles’ characters at one time or another and that we now know them for who they are.

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A native of Iowa, Dene Hellman has lived in North Carolina since the ‘80s. She is a graduate of The University of Wisconsin Green Bay and has written professionally in numerous genres, including corporate publications, executive speeches, newspaper feature writing, commercial videos, and two books of poetry with Annie O’Dell. She is the author of The Ninety-Ninth Reunion and The People Under the House. She currently lives and writes in Winston-Salem, NC. Dene has four daughters and six grandsons.