Mapping a landscape in 1860s Ireland
I already know this review is not remotely going to do justice to the book, because this is one of those books which is all about the writing style. The plotline is good too, but it is really secondary to...
Lisa
Lisa Lau is a lecturer at Keele University, specialising in postcolonial
theory and literature of the Indian Subcontinent, investigating issues of representation, identity politics, diaspora, and gender. She is the co-author of Re-Orientalism and Indian Writing in English (2014)
Lisa travels frequently and widely, and can whip up anything from Malaysian short ribs to a British mince pie at a moment's notice.
Sri Lankan Social Satire
The title comes from a dish that the protagonist, Malik, is fond of ordering from a hole in the wall Chinese takeaway run by Mr Yun, which is the only alternative to Mrs Ha’s more upmarket Chinese restaurant, where you...
At the bottom of the academic hierarchy
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...
The reality of a tradwife influencer life
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...
The Awkward Art of Socialising
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...
Children Die and Parents go on Living
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...
Simplistic good people and villainous villains
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...
Misfits
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,...
Facing Mortality with Dry Humour
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...
Extraordinary writing
This book is so hard to read that it is testament to the author’s skills that I continued to read it, avidly in fact, almost against my own wishes. Sarah Perry is writing of the death of her beloved father-in-law, his...
Real Estate, Real Mess
I must confess I thought this book would be more about the property market in DC and the experience of buying a house. And to some extent, it is about the pursuit of a house, but the focus is not really on...
Windows into Working Women’s Lives in 1920
I may have foolishly failed to take Susan’s advice about reading Death Comes to Pemberley, but at least I had the sense to follow up on her recommendation of Women’s Hotel. From the very start, Lavery’s droll style made me...
More about a perfect family
Having read Newman’s Sandwich, I somehow felt I had to also read its sequel, Wreck. I am not sure exactly why, given that Sandwich was okay but not brilliant by any means, and its protagonist, Rocky, a mixture of annoying and lovable, sincere but...
The infinite diasporic variations within a community
From the outset, this is clearly a very thoughtfully put together novel. The author ponders how to render her characters’ names, characters who “move within various Chinese-speaking regions of the world”, to “denote their code-switching in a way that would...
Lives in Transition
This is a novel about Claire and Eliot, married for decades, when Claire enters the last few weeks or months of her life, stopping cancer treatment after 8 years. At the start of the novel, Claire drops her bombshell –...
Recent Comments