The Scars of Slavery
~ Washington Black, by Esi Edugyan ~ George Washington Black is the full name of our protagonist – though he is often called Wash by friends – who was born in 1818 in Barbados, a slave, and the son of a...
Lisa
Virtuoso Storytelling
~ The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett ~ This is a classically excellent family saga. I always look immensely forward to any new Patchett novel, and this was no disappointment. The Dutch House of the title is a lavish and...
Family Ties
~ Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, by Anne Tyler ~ Anne Tyler’s writing often depicts relationships, particularly familial relationships, and Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is another wonderful novel in this vein. The novel begins with Pearl, who at about...
Yangban and Ssangnom
~ Free Food for Millionaires, by Min Jin Lee ~ The novel begins with 22 year old protagonist Casey Han, who has just graduated from Princeton, coming home to Queens, where her Korean immigrant family have always lived, for a...
Minarets on the Village Green
~ This Green and Pleasant Land, by Ayisha Malik ~ This novel is kept extremely lighthearted despite taking on some weighty issues in UK society (such as English identity, the rise of Islamophobia, village mentality, discrimination, hate crime, etc.) The...
Quiet Desperation
~ We, the Survivors. By Tash Aw ~ We, The Survivors, is Tash Aw’s fourth novel, and his most accomplished by far. This work of fiction comes very close to being a little masterpiece. Its writing voice is assured, fluent,...
A quaint, cardboard village
~ How to Find Love in a Bookshop, by Veronica Henry ~ What a wonderful title. What a lovely front cover. What a lack-lustre read. Henry’s novel sets up Nightingale Bookshop as the centrepiece, but actually, it is nothing more...
Deep lochs, shallow characters
~ At the Water’s Edge, by Sara Gruen ~ This period romance novel, set in the 2nd World War, features a young protagonist called Maddie, newly married, of the upper crust set in Philadelphia. She does little except enjoy herself...
Hardscrabble lives
~Gap Creek, by Robert Morgan ~ The riveting thing about this novel, for me any rate, is Julie Richards (nee Harmon)’s capacity for hard work and sheer optimism. It is hard to keep in mind she is only 17 years...
Mountain Man Adventurer
~ The Last American Man, by Elizabeth Gilbert ~ This is one of Gilbert’s earlier works, published in 2002, but her writing voice was distinctive already. It is an aptly named book, chronicling the personality of Eustace Conway, born in...
Portrait of a Marriage
~ Listen to Me, by Hannah Pittard ~ This slim novel has a very simple storyline: Married couple, Maggie and Mark, with their dog, Gerome, embark on their annual interstate drive to Virginia for a vacation with Mark’s parents. Mark...
Vietnamese diasporic rom-com
~ The Bride Test, by Helen Hoang ~ This was an easy reading book, but not necessary one that should be taken too seriously or read in too much depth for understanding of the Vietnamese culture or Vietnamese diasporic society...
Potent Brew
~ The Outlaw Album, by Daniel Woodrell ~ Having read the review of Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone and then eagerly devoured the novel, I sought out more from this author, and managed to get my hands on his 2011 collection of...
Honour Bound
~ Honor, by Elif Shafak ~ This is neither here nor there perhaps, but the 2012 Viking (hard backed) edition of this novel spells its title as “Honor” while within the pages of the novel, the word is always spelt...
Slivers of a life
~ Clock Dance, by Anne Tyler ~ This novel follows a charming chronology: we meet our protagonist, Willa Drake, in 1967, at 11 years of age, where her mum has just had a quarrel with her dad and left the...
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