Lisa

Quiet, delightful charm

Mary Lawson charms the socks off me. It is very difficult to put one’s finger on exactly what makes her writing so appealing, but the attraction is there and powerful, from cover to cover, unwavering. This is, on the surface...

Migrants, murder and racism

The Fortune Men has been shortlisted for the 2021 Booker, so I embarked on this reading experience with the full expectation that it would be of considerable merit – and it did not disappoint. The novel’s plotline is relatively simple,...

Vivid flights

From the start, the writing voice is compelling, both being extremely assured and able to pack in huge amounts of information in a few words. Early on, we hear from one of the two protagonists that, My parents had left...

Understated poignancy

If your tastes in books runs to family relationships and domestic drama, to the understated and the quietly poignant, this is an example of an excellent read. It is not an explosive kind of novel, everything happens very quietly, beneath...

Murder at an elderly pace

This is a book which sets out to amuse and entertain. And to some extent, it does this well enough, offering a frothy, light read that carefully avoids straying into the frivolous or the trite. It is a whodunnit, but...

Rape and genocide

This is such an important book to read, but it hardly needs any warning that it is not bedtime reading. Christina Lamb is a British investigative journalist who travels to many parts of the conflict-ridden world we live in, recording...

Distinct and well-developed characters

When the story first begins, our protagonist, Libby (14), is in a car, sitting in the back with Thomas (18) her older brother, and Ellen (12) her younger sister in the middle. Her mum, Faye, is driving, and eldest sister...

An easy Metro read

It must be admitted that I picked up this book displayed in the New Books section in the library because the blurb at the back said, “A beautiful tale for everyone who likes to end a book with a smile...

The End of the Road?

Once again like her penultimate novel, The Motion of the Body Through Space, Shriver presents us with a couple (though British this time, not American) who are in the mid-later stages of life, as our protagonists. And once again, they...

Italian Introspection

This is a novella (just 157 pages) by Lahiri which she originally wrote in Italian, then translated herself, into English. It has over 45 chapters, so you can guess that each chapter is quite short. In expected Lahiri style, the...

Undignified distortion of a classic character

A fairly avid reader of Sherlock Holmes spin-offs, I am not one to turn up my nose at non-Conan Doyle authored novels utilising the well known, well loved characters of the Holmes brothers, Dr Watson, and Mrs Hubbard. My favourite...

Delightful, and never dull

Such a long title for these 2 short stories, which come to just a little over 100 pages in all. This will not be a review which is demanding or interrogating, because much of the pleasure of reading a Mary...

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...