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...
Fiction
Lucky Girls, lucky reader
Here are five stories, set in Southeast Asia and on the Indian subcontinent-each one bearing the weight and substance of a short novella-narrated by young women who find themselves, often as expatriates, face to face with the compelling circumstances of...
Outsiders in America
Driss Guerraoui dies in a hit-and-run accident in a small California Mojave town. Driss is a Moroccan immigrant, so there are inevitable threads of racism running through his backstory and the investigation of his death, and through the reactions of...
Interior monologues in upstate New York
Richard Russo’s trilogy of books set in North Bath, upstate New York, follows the familiar themes of many of his novels: absent fathers, resentful sons, and resulting trauma that continues from generation to generation. His Empire Falls was set in...
Missing black children
Having read all of Tayari Jones’ other novels (The Untelling, Silver Sparrow, An American Marriage), I was pleased to finally come across a copy of her debut novel, Leaving Atlanta. It is told in 3 books, each from the point...
A protagonist even more dogged than her van
The Dog of the North caught my eye entirely because of its title. Was this a Jack London-ish adventure novel in the Yukon? Or was this slang for something entirely different? In fact, the title turns out to be the...
More tales of Ardnakelty
The first thing any Tana French fans would want to know is: Did you love this book?? The answer is a resounding, YES! Yes, I loved it, devoured it, enjoyed myself hugely reading it. But it is not without its...
1/3 of a WWII story, but another 2/3 of tedium
A Town Like Alice drifted across my library page, and having heard it was Australian author Nevil Shute’s most famous book, I thought I should give it a shot. Structurally, the book is a clunker. It’s framed around a solicitor’s...
Women’s Words
Growing up in Oxford in the 1880s, Esme is a happy little girl although she has lost her mother young, because she is loved and looked after by her father and other kind friends. Her father’s work is assisting in...
Oldies and goodies
Barbara Kingsolver is the well-deserved recipient of many literary prizes. Her more recent novels have been impressive stand-alones, but I’m among the many readers who also love and re-read her original trilogy set in Arizona. The Bean Trees and Pigs...
Wrapped up in a class and expat bubble
The novel is set in 2019 Hong Kong at the time of the protests, but if you are a reader who is hoping for a lot of political discussion and staging, this may not be the novel for you. Hong...
An interrogative angle on the past*
It is always a pleasure to open a book by an accomplished, confident author, and Zadie Smith is one of those. Her first novel White Teeth was a rollicking tale about a Bangladeshi immigrant and his English friend, and her...
White mistresses and black slave
There are many books written about the relationship between white mistresses and black slaves, and this too is one such, but there is an added angle with the book addressing both racism and sexism almost equally – that the white...
1950s Irish charm
This is a novel which is as comforting to read as having a mug of hot tea and a chocolate digestive biscuit on a rainy day. In an age where so many novels are edgy, disquieting, challenging, clever, deliberately discomfiting,...
Aryan Babies
Historical fiction can be tricky. On the one hand, the author needs to aim for historical accuracy, including the less appealing social and cultural aspects of the time. On the other hand, the author might not want to associate himself...
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