Luminous underwater encounters
This is a novel filled with love for the ocean and everything in it, plus all its unknowns and mysteries and magic. It is, like so many of other Powers novels, also a clarion call to conservation. The novel is...
Lisa
An introspective eco-thriller
Being a wuss, I was put off reading Catton’s Booker Prize winning, 800+ paged The Luminaries because it seemed too lengthy, but now I suspect I should just bite the bullet and try it out. Simply because her latest, Birnam...
The Physics of Life and Death
This novel is by no means unique in writing about what happens after the death of someone who has been important in the lives of those they left behind. Recently, by chance, I was reading Anna Quindlen’s After Annie, where the...
Lucky Woman
This is not one of Quindlen’s lovely novels, but a non-fiction where she writes her thoughts on life and life’s lessons. It was a highly enjoyable read because I relish her writing voice, its clarity and charm, and also enjoyed...
Understated charm
Having read a few less than glowing reviews of this Patchett novel, I admit I approached it with low expectations. Perhaps that was part of the reason I found it unexpectedly enjoyable. (I have mostly enjoyed all Patchett’s other novels,...
A war story in a generic tropical colony
Set in what was then the Malayan Peninsula (now Malaysia) at the time of the Japanese occupation (1940s), unusually, the protagonist is a Eurasian, Cecily. Eurasians are a minority community in Malaysia, but in the time of the British occupation,...
A whodunnit that’s hefty, but worth it
This is a hefty book. When I first came across it, I wondered what whodunnit requires almost 500 pages (nearly double a ‘normal’ length novel). But as the novel begins to unfurl, one realises the length of the novel is...
Covid Times, in Tahiti and New York
Having enjoyed Fredenberger’s The Newly Weds, The Dissidents, and Lucky Girls, I was quite sure her latest, The Limits, would also be good reading, and I was not disappointed. The Limits is set in the time of the lockdowns in the...
Loss of a Sister
The novel opens with a dinner party hosted by Robyn and Cat, for 3 other couples: Robyn’s old friend, Willa, and her somewhat obnoxious boyfriend; Robyn’s beloved and nerdy brother Michael and his fascinating girlfriend, Liv; and Cat’s brother, Nate...
Survivor
I could not wait to read this book. Rushdie has written 22 books in his 77 or 78 years of life, and of those, only 2 have been non-fiction – Joseph Anton, and now Knife. These are the only 2 books...
Second Chance Romance
Rowell is known as a children and/or YA writer, and indeed, I had enjoyed some of her books for young adults, such as Landline, Eleanor and Park, and Fangirl. Rowell’s gift for invoking the awkwardness and exploratory, experimental time of teenagehood...
Growing up on the Mexican-American border – a story for these times
The book is well titled, set as it is at the US-Mexico border, depicting the lives of the Lopez family whose circumstances and opportunities are determined by the border to no little extent. We first meet our protagonist, Ramon, as...
Butter makes everything better — even murder, mystery and feminism
To my delight, this book really is a lot about butter! As a butter-lover, this is a joy, after the tyranny of margarine. The mystery woman of the book states categorically in our first encounter of her, But there are...
Desire and suspicion
This novel will probably stand out in my mind as one of those with the most explicit writing on lesbian sexual intercourse. Some of the descriptions run on for pages, in great detail. It is a novel set in Overijssel,...
Witch trials
This novel set in a small village in Scotland, Kilgoyne, featuring the protagonist, Majorie Crowe, whom the villagers think is between 60 and 70 years of age, “They think me to divorced or a lifelong spinster, that I used to...
Recent Comments