Coming to America – Part 1 About three months ago I started two books with, published some 40 years apart, with essentially, the same story line. Both focus on young Indians coming to the US, leaving family and the comforts...
This is a hefty book. When I first came across it, I wondered what whodunnit requires almost 500 pages (nearly double a ‘normal’ length novel). But as the novel begins to unfurl, one realises the length of the novel is...
Historical fiction is not easy to write, I should think. It demands extensive research to be convincing, but at the same time the research needs to be painted in gently, filling the background, with the story in the foreground, and...
Having enjoyed Fredenberger’s The Newly Weds, The Dissidents, and Lucky Girls, I was quite sure her latest, The Limits, would also be good reading, and I was not disappointed. The Limits is set in the time of the lockdowns in the...
Sarah Waters’ Gothic Fingersmith is set in Victorian England, and she does not spare the reader from the realities of the period. Beyond the wall lay Mr Ibbs’ sister, who was kept to her bed; she often woke ith the...
The novel opens with a dinner party hosted by Robyn and Cat, for 3 other couples: Robyn’s old friend, Willa, and her somewhat obnoxious boyfriend; Robyn’s beloved and nerdy brother Michael and his fascinating girlfriend, Liv; and Cat’s brother, Nate...
I could not wait to read this book. Rushdie has written 22 books in his 77 or 78 years of life, and of those, only 2 have been non-fiction – Joseph Anton, and now Knife. These are the only 2 books...
Rowell is known as a children and/or YA writer, and indeed, I had enjoyed some of her books for young adults, such as Landline, Eleanor and Park, and Fangirl. Rowell’s gift for invoking the awkwardness and exploratory, experimental time of teenagehood...
Autofiction — lightly anonymized fiction based on the author’s own life experience — has been very popular lately, with a host of young writers exploring that genre. As a smattering of examples reviewed in this blog, there’s Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie...
The book is well titled, set as it is at the US-Mexico border, depicting the lives of the Lopez family whose circumstances and opportunities are determined by the border to no little extent. We first meet our protagonist, Ramon, as...
The general plot of a thriller involving terrorists is well known: the terrorists have an gruesome scheme in the works while an FBI/CIA/MI5 agent races to uncover the plan and capture the terrorists before their horrific plan is executed. In...
To my delight, this book really is a lot about butter! As a butter-lover, this is a joy, after the tyranny of margarine. The mystery woman of the book states categorically in our first encounter of her, But there are...
Two major events were happening in Scotland in 1843: one religious, and one agricultural. On the religious front, a bitter schism erupted in the Church of Scotland, where evangelicals who fiercely opposed control of the church by landowners split off...
This novel will probably stand out in my mind as one of those with the most explicit writing on lesbian sexual intercourse. Some of the descriptions run on for pages, in great detail. It is a novel set in Overijssel,...
The title of this review is a reference to a message sent by President Andrew Jackson to the Choctaws and Chickasaw Indians in the 1830s indicating that, as a friend, he planned to move their people to the Trans-Mississippi West,...
“A bomb went off in her brain” at eighteen
Excellent Penang fantasy
Giving the victims a voice
Three generations of Filipino-Americans
“The tremendous stress of demanding their share”
She’d rather have you laugh at her than feel sorry for her
A Celebration of Unorthodox Relationships
A Life in 143 pages
Predators and Enablers
An unexpected and disturbing visitor
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