Wickedly funny satire
~ Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons ~ Longman, 1932 In the introduction, Lynne Truss calls this novel a masterpiece, and so it is. Truss however does not agree with common opinion that it is necessarily a parody of Mary...
Lisa
Intimate and revealing conversations
~ Wellness, by Nathan Hill ~ Knopf, 2023. It is with great pleasure I now know of yet another wonderful writer and storyteller, Nathan Hill. This is the first book of his that I have come across (Wellness is Hill’s 2nd novel),...
The Consequences of Choices Made
~ Choice, by Neel Mukherjee ~ W.W.Norton, 2024. The title of this book is singularly apt. Choice is not a novel, rather it is 3 long, short-stories, 2 set in London and 1 in Bangladesh, which all show individuals making choices,...
The Color of Me
~ If I Survive You, by Jonathan Escoffery ~ Macmillan, 2022. While one may disagree about Booker Prize winners, amongst the other shortlisted novels for the prize, there are usually some gems to be found. In the 2023 shortlist, Sarah...
An Obedient Woman
~ Study for Obedience, by Sarah Bernstein ~ Penguin Random House, 2023. From the very start, the quality of the writing was obvious, which explained why it had been shortlisted for the 2023 Booker. The writing style is so distinctive...
Lost in Translation
~ Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, by Satoshi Yagisawa ~ Translated by Eric Ozawa ~ Harper Perennial, 2023. This book is supposedly an international bestseller, the debut novel about twenty-five year old Takako, niece of the owner of the 3rd generation...
A readable rehashing of stereotypes
~ The Museum of Failures, by Thrity Umrigar ~ Algonquin, 2023. This is by no means the worst of Umrigar’s novels, but it is not her best either. It is a very readable, pleasant novel, set within a Parsi community...
Clear and Distinctive as a Bell
~ The Hero of This Book, by Elizabeth McCracken ~ Harper Collins, 2023. The writing voice is clear and distinctive as a bell from the very start, a stream of consciousness which runs through the novel which is set within...
Neither white enough nor Arabic enough, though she can pass for either
~ Amreekiya, by Lena Mahmoud ~ University Press of Kentucky, 2018. Isra is the child of a Palestinian (Falasteen) father and an American (white) mother. When her mother dies young (when Isra is only 8), and her father seemingly deserts...
Confluent storylines on a Kerala river
~ The Covenant of Water, by Abraham Verghese ~ Grove Press, 2023. Having read Verghese’s other novels (Cutting for Stone, The Tennis Partner, and My Own Country), I was fairly confident I would enjoy his latest, The Covenant of Water....
An island paradise 300 ft from mainland USA
~ This Other Eden, by Paul Harding ~ W.W. Norton, 2023. It is immediately obvious why the novel is so titled, because Apple Island (42 acres, barely 300 feet from the mainland of the USA), despite seeming so bare and...
If Intelligence and Advanced IQ are Taboo
This novel kicks off with the protagonist, Pearson, being told to take her child home from school because he used unacceptable language, namely, he said his classmate’s T-shirt was stupid – the forbidden S-word. In a dinner party that night,...
Drama and reflexivity
I had been eagerly awaiting Mannion’s second novel since her amazing debut, A Crooked Tree; nor have I been disappointed. This read equally well, the kind of novel that draws a reader in quickly and holds the reader’s attention effortlessly...
Breathtaking Year Abroad
Although this is a novel supposedly about an ordinary American college kid’s year abroad, this year abroad, I think I can safely say, is nothing like any year abroad I have ever heard of. Tiller Bardman begins as a very...
A sedative, a stimulant and a hallucinogen
Pollan’s book seems intended to get us thinking a little differently about plants and drugs and the effects of certain chemical compounds on us and in our lives. He divides the book up into 3 sections: the first deals with...
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