Foster Care Indictment
~ My Name is Why, by Lemn Sissay ~ This novel is an indictment of the children’s foster care and care services in UK. Sissay tells the story of how he was taken away as a baby from his Ethiopian...
Books
Tribal Threads
~ The Round House, by Louise Erdrich ~ Joe Coutts is an only child in an unusually (by his description) stable and happy Indian (Native American) family on an Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota. His mother parses the bloodlines and...
A sassy, articulate, intelligent, flighty woman
~ Queenie, by Candice Carty-Williams ~ Queenie Jenkins is a young black woman (2nd generation Jamaican) from south London (the geography is important to her) working in journalism (The Daily Read, culture section) in London. London’s multiculturalism and segregation are...
Abduction ripples through a community
~ Disappearing Earth, by Julia Phillips ~ This riveting novel starts with two young girls on a beach, occupying themselves while their mother is at work. Alyona could see, under her sister’s feet, the pebbles breaking the curves of Sophia’s...
Exacting rules for single women
~ A Single Thread, by Tracy Chevalier ~ Another triumph by Chevalier. This is a beautifully worked piece almost in miniature, set in Winchester in the early 1930s, against the backdrop of a country still recovering from the great war...
Race Relations Mysteries
Black Water Rising, and The Cutting Season, by Attica Locke Houston-born Attica Locke is a screenwriter and director who started writing novels in 2009. Her first two novels, Black Water Rising and The Cutting Season are in the mystery-noir genre,...
Marsh Girl Resilience
~ Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens ~ Kya is a fiercely lovable protagonist in her strength, resilience, vulnerability, and thirst for knowledge. This novel is set in two periods, but in the same geographical location – the marshes...
Raw Poetry
~ On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong ~ Gorgeous is a good description for the beautiful language in this novel. But difficult could be another word, to describe the storyline. I confess I read the novel while only...
Overdone Swedish Satire
~ The 100-year-old man who climbed out of the window and disappeared, by Jonas Jonasson ~ The title and author of this novel immediately suggest a quirkily delightful Scandinavian story, along the lines of A Man Called Ove. Indeed, the...
Poignant and Prosaic
~Inheritance, by Jenny Éclair ~ This tale encompassing 4 generations begins with the inauspicious marriage of in the 1930s of aristocratic but skint Teddy Carmichael (the younger son of a younger son) and Margaret (Peggy) Oppenheimer, a wealthy American. Despite...
Anguished Deliberations
~ Women Talking, by Miriam Toews ~ Agency and self-determination. That’s what the Mennonite women in Miriam Toews’ powerful novel struggle towards over the course of the book, despite the patriarchy, religious, and community culture stacked against them. Mennonites are...
Brown Man in a White Man’s City
~ Amnesty, by Arvind Adiga ~ Amnesty is vintage Adiga. Need I say more? After the disappointment of Selection Day (which was by no means awful, just less accessible!), it is a joy to go back to the powerful, punchy,...
Secrets and Lies
~ Fates and Furies, by Lauren Groff ~ A beautiful young couple walk along a New England beach. They had secretly married that morning, and are focused entirely on each other. They make love in the dunes. He longed for...
Love, family, nature
~ A Parchment of Leaves, by Silas House ~ An Irish descendent riding up Rosebud Mountain to clear the land passes an eighteen year old Cherokee girl of such stunning looks that he cannot get her out of his mind:...
Life changes in Nairobi
~ A Change in Altitude, by Anita Shreve ~ Patrick (from Chicago) and Margaret (from Boston) meet and fall in love, and after 2 years together – “married five months” – move to Kenya. Paul is a medical man who...
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