A Flourishing Correspondence
As soon as I began this novel, I began to despair at how slim the volume felt in my hands, because this is the kind of read one hopes will last for many hours. Right from the outset, the plot...
Lisa
Endearing but nondescript characters
This is Niven’s second Young Adult novel (though she has also written adult fiction and non-fiction), but the first one I have read by her – apparently, she was celebrated as a NY Times bestseller for All the Bright Places. I...
Life’s Later Decades
I was so pleased to begin this novel and find the protagonist is a 60 year old – Serenata, living with her 64 year old husband, Remington. Pleased because increasingly, it intrigues me to have a perspective of life from...
Dark tapestry with glints of gold
This is a novel set in Zamana, a (fictional) city in Pakistan, a place of violence and fear and mob riots and religious intolerances, where love still tries to flourish, where atrocities and human rights violations are daily fare, and yet...
Original and sweet
The school bus seems an extremely hostile place, particularly at the back, from the start. Our protagonist, Park, starts out by pressing his earphones in and trying to plan music which may drown out the noise and slight bullying. This...
Lovely Literary Layers
If ever a reader was seeking a book built on an excellent cast of characters, this will fit the bill beautifully! It is a book by a consummate storyteller, about a storyteller, and in an entirely unobtrusive but quietly pleasing...
Mental Illness in the Teenage Mind
Impossible not to pick up a book with such a title! And having read John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, I was expecting good things – and was not disappointed. This time, our protagonist is Aza Holmes, and although...
Cross-cultural Chasm
This book is about a failed cross-cultural English-Pakistani marriage, which resulted in the Pakistani father spiriting his two children off to Karachi without letting the mother know where they had gone. The reader looking for a sensitive unpacking of cross-culture,...
Nuances of class, respectability and affluence
Having been impressed by Silver Sparrow (2011) and An American Marriage (2018), I sought out Jones’s second novel, The Untelling (2005) (her debut novel is Leaving Atlanta, 2002). This novel once again features a young, black woman as protagonist, and...
Skin colour, politics and poverty
One of those books you are glad your bookclub chose so that you read it! Trevor Noah is of course a well known public figure; this book gave a very comprehensive understanding of the South Africa he grew up in,...
Shellshock
It seems to have taken me four decades of reading, to come on a startling realisation midway through this novel, exactly why I so value the imaginative, innovative, skillfully crafted writing styles when reading novels, above the pedestrian and prosaic...
Domestic pathos and petulance
The carer is 50 year old Mandy, from Solihull, with a Brummie accent, thick body, plain face, and no dress sense. She is working-class; which as Moggach would have it, watches daytime TV and goes to Nandos. She is hired...
Intelligent, Self-Aware Teenagers
I don’t read many Young Adult (YA) novels, but if they are this good, I need to read more! Am glad my book club chose this book because otherwise, I may not have read it, particularly given its subject matter...
Upstairs, Downstairs in the White House
Brower has collected stories from the staff who serve within the White House for this book, spanning 5 decades, 10 administrations, and from all ranks, from butlers, maids, chefs, florists, doormen – and also from former first ladies, and first...
Intelligent consciousness
~ Autumn, by Ali Smith ~ This is not going to be a plot-informed review, because this novel is not really about the plotline. Yes, I can tell you the protagonist is Elisabeth Demand, an art history lecturer, who lives...
Recent Comments