Atrocity
There are all too few novels written in English on the ‘comfort women’ of the Japanese occupation in Singapore from 1942-1945, so I seized on this one and read it avidly. It certainly tells a very important story, though how...
Lisa
But never doubt I love
The novel starts by telling us that Hamnet and Hamlet are in fact the same name, entirely interchangeable in Stratford records in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. O’Farrell’s novel is a rewriting of Shakespeare’s life, without ever mentioning...
Charming and distinctive
Although this is one of Toibin’s earlier novels, I had not previously read it; but it felt instantly familiar nevertheless, with his distinctive style. This one is set in Toibin’s own birth county, Wexford, in the southeast of Ireland. It...
Lovable characters described by a born storyteller
I looked for this book because of my huge enjoyment of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, co-authored by Annie Barrows, and her aunt, Marry Anne Shaffer. I just knew Barrows would be a good storyteller, and I...
Code of Silence
The title of this book comes from the IRA’s mantra that all its cadres are taught that when captured and questioned, they are to stonewall, to say nothing. It also is at the heart of one of the many stories...
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...
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...
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