If writers “write what they know”, Ann Patchett must live an enviable life. Her previous novel, Tom Lake, and this one, Whistler, both describe the very comfortable lives of upscale New Yorkers. They are rarely troubled by quotidian problems, or...
I always wanted to find out more about the US academic system, so this seemed a good book to read. Our protagonist, Sam, is a PhD from SHU, probably standing for Sacred Heart University – the author just uses acronyms...
That was one of the worst things about losing your wife, I found: your wife is the very person you want to discuss it all with. Not many authors can write an ironic, funny, touching and perceptive novel about the...
Natalie Heller Mills is our protagonist and she declares right at the opening of the book that “I am perfect at being alive” (p4). She starts out as being smug and self-congratulatory, but very quickly, the book reveals the much...
When I reached my gate [..], I discovered there were a lot of Chinese American students boarding the United flight from Boston to Taipei [..]. They looked Chinese, but not Chinese Chinese. You could tell from the summer tans, the...
There was a lot of discussion about white writers writing as black characters (Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, for example); this novel is about a man who writes the entire novel in the voice and first person narrator of a 57...
If you remember the days of sending and receiving physical letters in envelopes, then you are part of an ever-dwindling group, and likely to enjoy this lovely novel. It’s 2012, and seventy-three year old Sybil Van Antwerpt has a regular...
Having just lost my own darling dad, I was looking for silver linings in the bereavement, and one such is that my father had expressed how burying one’s parents is the natural and right way, as they ‘pay their debt...
[1] Nebraska[2], by Monica Datta, looked intriguing and not just because (I assumed) it seemed to be an Indian immigrant story set in or related somehow to Nebraska – from a blurb about the book: Anna Chatterjee has just been...
I am one of those who absolutely loved Stockett’s debut novel, The Help. Yes, it was controversial – a white woman writing in the voices of black women – but I nevertheless thought The Help read very well, told a...
American origin novels tend to be about tough pioneers who brave nature as they head out west, or cowboys who roam the prairies with massive herds of cattle, or stern lawmen who bring order to the wild frontier. All of...
I have liked many of Baker Kline’s novels, and I am so glad this latest is no exception. The story starts in the 1840s, in Wilkes County, North Carolina. Our protagonist, Sarah – Sallie – is a typical southern belle,...
Daniyal Mueenuddin’s exquisite collection of short stories In Other Rooms, Other Wonders was published in 2009. A mere 17 years later, his first novel, This is Where the Serpent Lives, has come out. For non-authors like myself, the long gap...
A pocket sized book of not quite 100 pages, this is more short story than novel. But it is classic Alan Bennett. It is extremely British, very dry in its humour, ribald at times, and poignant too. The setting is...
The day Gertie blew, I watched my father leave for work like I did every morning. It was called morning by the men who worked that shift, but to me it was still night, black and cold and silent except...
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