~ Perfect, by Rachel Joyce ~ Joyce’s distinctive writing style (from her bestsellers, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, and The Love Song of Miss Queenie Henessey) is immediately apparent in her latest novel, Perfect. It is so named because...
~ Tender at the Bone, by Ruth Reichl ~ I first came across Ruth Reichl in the early 1990s. We had a small baby and perforce spent much of our time at home, and the New York Times dining section...
~ The Wangs vs The World, by Jade Chang ~ This is quite a long novel, 49 chapters in 350 plus pages of close set typescript, but having finished it, it seems to have gone nowhere. The plotline runs that...
~ The Book of Unknown Americans, by Cristina Henríquez ~ The title and the first few pages immediately tell you what the author is trying to accomplish here: tell the stories of Americans whose accomplishments rarely get attention, who both...
~ Washington Black, by Esi Edugyan ~ George Washington Black is the full name of our protagonist – though he is often called Wash by friends – who was born in 1818 in Barbados, a slave, and the son of a...
~ Traps, by Mackenzie Bezos ~ I must admit I picked up this novel because of the author’s last name. So let’s get that elephant out of the way first. The author married Jeff Bezos, who then went on to...
~ The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett ~ This is a classically excellent family saga. I always look immensely forward to any new Patchett novel, and this was no disappointment. The Dutch House of the title is a lavish and...
~ Jim Allison: Breakthrough ~ The backlash against scientific evidence and skepticism about data-driven consensus has reached alarming proportions, the most obvious instances being the anti-vaccination movement and the refusal to accept climate change. Into this atmosphere comes a wonderful...
~ Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, by Anne Tyler ~ Anne Tyler’s writing often depicts relationships, particularly familial relationships, and Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is another wonderful novel in this vein. The novel begins with Pearl, who at about...
~ Free Food for Millionaires, by Min Jin Lee ~ The novel begins with 22 year old protagonist Casey Han, who has just graduated from Princeton, coming home to Queens, where her Korean immigrant family have always lived, for a...
~ The Gifted School, by Bruce Holsinger ~ Pointed and clever, The Gifted School has a delightfully snarky opening quote: There is something so tantalizing about having a gifted child that some parents will go to almost any lengths to...
~ This Green and Pleasant Land, by Ayisha Malik ~ This novel is kept extremely lighthearted despite taking on some weighty issues in UK society (such as English identity, the rise of Islamophobia, village mentality, discrimination, hate crime, etc.) The...
~ We, the Survivors. By Tash Aw ~ We, The Survivors, is Tash Aw’s fourth novel, and his most accomplished by far. This work of fiction comes very close to being a little masterpiece. Its writing voice is assured, fluent,...
~ A Frightfully English Execution, by Shamini Flint ~ It’s tempting to describe Shamini Flint’s Inspector Singh novels as ‘cosy mysteries’. They feature an appealingly crusty detective, and are full of sly humour. Despite their lack of pretentiousness, though, they...
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