Shades of Difference
In 1848, Alphonse Decuir, a freed slave, inherited sugarcane fields from his white father. On those acres, Decuir wanted to build [a] town for men like him, who would never be accepted as white but refused to be treated like...
Lisa
A chronicle of UK diversity
452 pages after completing this read, I am still waiting for the story to start. This is a curious book, with at least a dozen protagonists – and many more secondary characters. Each segment of the novel is devoted...
Another exceptional main character with a likeable sidekick; another solid novel
It is amazing what a good writer can pull off! This fairly short novel – just over 200 pages – would have us believe that our protagonist, child prodigy Colin Singleton, by the time he has graduated from high school,...
It’s all about the journey
This is a quintessentially British novel, full of the most British of characters, with their eccentricities and oddities and charm. The landscape is recognisably and superbly British, the pace and charm understatedly British, the dialogue and characters even more so....
Idiots, perhaps, but decent and kind
Having so enjoyed Beartown and its sequel Us Against Them, I was hoping for more of the same, but Anxious People appeared to be more in the style of The Man Called Ove and My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell...
Pedestrian Fare
You know how some novels are so good that as you are reading them, you are making a mental note to find more writing by the same author? Well, this is the opposite – I am making a mental note...
Hens and Weans
Shuggie Bain, winner of the 2020 Booker Prize, deserves all its accolades. To successfully distill real life into fiction is something only highly gifted novelists can achieve, and that this was written by a debutant, is eye opening. It is...
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...
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,...
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