Set largely in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and following a protagonist through some formative years, The Paper Palace is far from an idyllic coming-of-age tale. The title is the affectionate nickname for a beat-up old house in the Cape woods, where...
It is such a pleasure to be in the hands of a master craftsman, and John Le Carré is one indeed. Sure, a few of his novels from the past decade or two have been less exciting, perhaps even pedestrian,...
Mental illness is a difficult topic around which to center a novel. It would be all too easy to end up with a one-note portrayal of the sufferer which simply evokes sympathy, or leaves the reader relieved that they themselves...
Several people are enclosed in a manor house, or on an island, or in a train. The weather worsens, and they are trapped for a few days. And then a body is discovered. Over the course of the next few...
British WWII novels often have an oldfashioned charm with their dashing doomed fighter pilots or sturdily phlegmatic women keeping up the home front. On the surface, The Kitchen Front would appear to be a pleasant addition to the collection, but...
Most spy stories and thrillers involve men, so Flynn Berry’s Northern Spy is immediately a welcome addition to the genre. The protagonist is Tessa, a Belfast native with a beloved sister called Marian, and the men in this novel appear...
The Irish Magdalene laundries are now infamous: they were run to house unmarried pregnant (‘fallen’) women, who laboured in unpaid servitude for years or decades. Their babies were taken away from them and adopted out. The women were indefinitely incarcerated,...
‘I have all kinds of medical problems’, said the middle-aged lady. ‘Swollen foot, bad knees, stomach problems… and the doctors said there was nothing they can do!’ She was pleased to find a copy of Home Remedies by TV Sairam...
April in Spain refers to the month as well as a person. It’s not a particularly clever pun, and to me, this was reflective of the novel as well. Is it a mystery? Not a very successful one, as the...
Indra Nooyi’s memoir opens with a charming anecdote. In 2009 she was invited to the White House to meet India’s Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh. When Obama introduced her, Manmohan Singh exclaimed, “Oh! But she is one of us!” And the...
Ballet is a notoriously brutal profession. From early childhood through their teens, dancers must train and practice relentlessly, until they make it to a professional dance company with the hope of eventually attaining principal dancer status. An injury can derail...
Damon Galgut’s novel reflects the slow and partial fulfillment of the promise of the country it is set in: South Africa. It is a memorable read, the kind that stays with you for weeks afterwards, the kind where a passage...
Heads-up: this novel has a daunting cast of characters. In their favour, they are interestingly diverse: they live over multiple decades in two continents, they are black, white, married, single, straight, gay, male, female, and of various ages. Some are...
Emily Itami’s protagonist, Mizuki, is a fulltime housewife in Tokyo with an exhausted salaryman husband and two children. On the surface, her life looks fine, but she is miserable. I wanted this life, wanted my children. I guess that, like...
Barcelona in the early 2000s is the backdrop for this set of 3 loosely linked novellas. This is not the Barcelona of tourists — Las Ramblas, the bars, the seashore and Gaudi. Rupert Thomson’s stories touch on immigration, racism, migrants,...
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