Plainsong is a great book by an author new to us… Kent Haruf. This book is well worth your time. The story is told by a variety of narrators, all of the “voices” are interesting and the writing style spare and masterful. I’m looking forward to digging out more of this man’s work.
This briliant book is right up there with Frank McCourt’s “Angela’s Ashes”. It’s another book about a bleak and terrible (American) childhood from the viewpoint of the child that lived it and survived to write about it. And as with AA somehow the biography transcends the harshness of that life and finds gems in the story of poverty, neglect and pain and life with a brilliant but damaged, dreamer of a father. (more…)
Warning! This short book is dangerous, you might find yourself up at 2:00 AM unable to put it down. Taking as his setting the last shifts at a Red Lobster that is closing down during a snow-squall in New England, the author (Stewart O’Nan) has crafted a tight little microcosm that just reeled me in. (more…)
In January of 2002, Rory Stewart walked across Afghanistan as part of a longer 6000 mile trek through India and Nepal. This book (The Places In Between) is the result. In the regions in which he walked, the Taliban were still nominally in control. Stewart speaks Persian and was provided hospitality (to varying degrees) by warlords, Taliban commanders and villagers along the way. For Canadians I think this book is almost a ‘must read’ (more…)
We’ve both been William Boyd fans for a long time. He’s the author of “A Good Man in Africa” and his novels are always good and also “page turners” for us. Reckless is a WW II spy story told in reverse as a daughter gradually learns that her mother isn’t who she thinks she is. The plot jumps forward and backward from daughter’s exploration to mother’s story. The writing is excellent. As a major fan of John LeCarré, I appreciate a well-written book in this genre and Reckless is right up there with LeCarré for me. We both really enjoyed and appreciated this book. We continue to be on the William Boyd bandwagon.
Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living is a great first novel by young Australian, Carrie Tiffany. The novel opens with the “Better-Farming Train” and its cargo of exhibits and exhibitors travelling through rural Australia in the 1930’s Protagonist Jean Finnegan demonstrates sewing techniques for the farm wives while agriculturalists preach super-phosphates to their husbands. It’s a great book with fascinating characters moving through a pre-WWII landscape. (more…)
I’ve just finished reading “A House Unlocked” by Penelope Lively. This author-historian writes about her family’s house in Somerset and the furnishings. Lively spent her teenage years in the house with her Grandmother as primary ‘parent’. In each section, some rooms or objects are used to focus on significant historic events of the last century: a sampler with pictures of children leads to Lively’s musings on the profound effect of the evacuations of children from inner city London during the Second World War. (more…)