Lisa

Sexuality and judgement

Having been impressed by A Parchment of Leaves, I was keen to try another Silas House novel, and when I got back to DC, I found several in the Martin Luther King Jr Library. Southernmost begins with a flood in...

Unapologetic, chic, and capable — the perfect spy

I wasn’t sure at first whether this would be my kind of book since the protagonist, Nancy Grace Augusta Wake, is a leader in the French Resistance in WWII, and war stories are usually not my favourite genre. However, the...

Enchanting layers upon interlinked layers

I start this review with an apology to the reader; I hardly know how to begin to review such a book. An apology is needed all the more because this is such a remarkable book that I couldn’t hope for...

Self-awareness and angst

Ava is a young Irish woman who manages to get out of Ireland by taking up teaching English to children in Hong Kong. She has no vacation for teaching and very little interest in Hong Kong, but manages to be...

Miles to go, during a pandemic

A very topical novel indeed, written from the perspective of itinerant migrant labourers in India who journeyed home on foot when the national Covid lockdown gave them no other option. This is the (fictional) story of 15-year old Meher’s family,...

Luminous read

Sometimes you pick up a book because it is talked about a lot, or promoted well, or you hear it on the grapevine, read a review, your bookclub selects it, a friend recommends it. And sometimes, just sometimes, the gods...

Care Child

Although the book does not set out to overtly discuss race-related issues, the narrative nevertheless is underpinned by what it means to be a young coloured child in care, in 1980s UK. The author herself is of mixed-race descent (Irish...

Quiet delight

Since I have devotedly followed the entire No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series and mildly enjoyed a handful of other McCall Smith novels too, I was delighted to find he has placed this new one in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon),...

Class, Race and Motherhood

It is a book which seems deceptively low-key and insignificant because of the very self-absorbed person the protagonist is, who wants to only live in her own little, self-circumscribed world, but which is actually told quite well, and is very...

Words of life and death

This is my first acquaintance with Sigrid Nunez’s writing and I am left hoping I will have many other opportunities to further my acquaintance with more. Nunez’s style is a smooth stream of consciousness, an intelligent, introspective, painfully honest stream...

Sloppy and cloying

I admit it is not unusual for me to select a book because it is written by a South Asian writer. Munaweera is one such, an American-Sri Lankan (who had also lived in Nigeria), before settling on Oakland, California. What...

Ghanaian voice and flavour

When I first began reading this book, it was surprisingly uphill going, but only just for a few pages/chapters until one accustoms oneself to the writing style and dialogue in Ghanaian-inflected English, which is rather charming: You mean what? Miss...

Of a certain age

The idea behind this plotline is quite intriguing: a 70 year old woman left by her husband and feeling depressed, spots a black dress in a charity shop, Scoop neck, clingy. It spoke of cigarettes and Martinis […] snug but...

Officers and convicts

Having enjoyed The Lieutenant, I was looking forward to another Kate Grenville novel. A Room Made of Leaves is the account Elizabeth MacArthur nee Veale writes 12 years after her husband’s death, contradicting the narrative he had spun. John MacArthur...