State of Grace
~ The High Mountains of Portugal, by Yann Martel ~ Right from the outset, it is clear this is going to be a book with many hidden gems, and massive charm. It starts with Tomas decides to walk. p3 This...
Books
Atmospheric edginess
Every novel by Tana French is a gem, but for me, Faithful Place has an edge over the rest. In her Dublin Murder Squad series of six books (so far), French specializes in crimes where one of the detectives has...
Perpetually 2nd-class
So slim that this volume is more novella than novel, this read is deceptively simple and yet packs in a wealth of social commentary about South Korean gender issues. This is a translated book, but happily the writing still does...
A Life in 143 pages
In spare, evocative prose, Mary Costello traces the life of her protagonist, Tess Lohan, from her childhood in Ireland through decades of her life in New York, and from a school-going child with a large clutch of siblings to a...
Culture critique without nuance
~ A Woman is no Man, by Etaf Rum ~ The title sounded promising, and so did the blurb of the storyline – about how Palestinians who had lost their homes or been driven out, and migrated to New York,...
Performative Cultural Awareness
The Goodreads Choice awards list landed in my inbox, and who can resist a list of books? (I had only read one: The Vanishing Half) The best debut novel was a novel I had not heard of, Such a Fun...
Obscure and uninteresting
Having enjoyed some of O’Farrell’s books, particularly Instructions for a Heatwave, I was pleased to come across another of her novels, her second novel published in 2002, called My Lover’s Lover. The blurb talked of “the drug-like strength of O’Farrell’s...
Exercising Opinions
In We need to talk about Kevin, Lionel Shriver featured a chillingly callous teenager who plans and executes a shooting at his school. Big Brother focused on an extremely obese man who is ‘eating himself to death’. So Much For...
Clever but clichéd
Having enjoyed The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, it is unsurprising I found another Haddon novel a pleasant read. When the novel begins, it seems it is about a dysfunctional family – the Halls in Peterborough; dysfunctional...
Small Town Tensions
Set in a very small area of New Hampshire, Sue Miller’s The Arsonist features as its protagonist Frankie Rowley, a burned-out aid worker just returned from Kenya. Her parents have been summer visitors to the area for years, since Frankie...
Second fiddle family
From the acknowledgements page, I felt confident I was in the hands of an original and capable writer: here is what Jones wrote: For my parents Barbara and Mack Jones, who, to the best of my knowledge, are married only...
Ahistorical craftwork
This well-intentioned novel is set in 1950s India. Independence is in the air, not just for the recently independent country, but for the protagonist Lakshmi Shastri, who escapes an early marriage and domestic violence in a village to make a...
The March of Time
~ Emily Alone, by Stewart O’Nan ~ 80 years old, and widowed, Emily had “never wanted to be eighty. Practically, she’d never wanted to outlive Henry”. Living in affluence in a large house in Pittsburgh, Emily has Arlene, her (even...
L’enfant et l’affaire
~ The Margot Affair, by Sanaë Lemoine ~ It is said that the French have more relaxed sexual attitudes than the uptight Brits and Americans. Indeed, French presidents Mitterand, Chirac, Sarkozy and Hollande have all had multiple affairs with various...
Sharp Super-Sleuth
~ The Knife, by Jo Nesbo ~ I waited quite a long time to read this book, delayed somewhat by the lockdown, but it was well worth the wait. Having already read the previous eleven Harry Hole books by Nesbo...
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