~ Names for the Sea: Strangers in Iceland. By Sarah Moss ~ I have so enjoyed all of Moss’ fiction that I bought her non-fiction book without hesitation. And I have not been disappointed. Her careful, thoughtful, skilful writing in...
~ The Mothers. By Brit Bennett ~ This astonishingly assured first novel centers on a black community in a small Southern California town, and specifically, three young people: Nadia Turner, beautiful, smart and unhappy; Luke Sheppard, the pastor’s son; and...
~ The Lie of the Land. By Amanda Craig ~ Lottie and Quentin, upper-middle class, inveterate Londoners, find themselves forced to move to rural Devon for a year when they realise they cannot yet afford to divorce and sell the...
~ A Suitable Boy, by Vikram Seth ~ It’s been almost three decades since I, and the world, read and loved this novel. Most beloved books get re-read from time to time, but the sheer size (literally. 4.2 lbs on...
~ Grotesque, by Natsuo Kirino ~ This is only Kirino’s second book to be translated into English – her first was Out, also a superb piece of writing – although she is well known in Japan as a crime writer....
~ Grace After Henry – Eithne Shortall ~ I must admit that this is a novel which caught my eye because of its title. It is exactly what it says on the tin – the story of Grace’s life after...
~ My Sister, the Serial Killer. (Oyinkan Braithwaite) ~ A distinctly original addition to the satirical genre, Oyinkan Braithwaite’s first novel is set in her home country of Nigeria. Korede is a capable, accomplished nurse who carries a torch for...
~ The Burning Girl, by Claire Messud ~ Published in 2017, this is the most recent of Messud’s novels. I had enjoyed her other novels previously, particularly The Woman Upstairs, but this I think is quite Messud’s best – the...
~ Where’d You Go, Bernadette. By Maria Semple. ~ The preamble to this novel identifies the protagonist. The first annoying thing is when I ask Dad what he thinks happened to Mom, he always says, “What’s most important is for...
~ Gweilo: Memories of a Hong Kong Childhood, by Martin Booth ~ This is Martin’s Booth memoir written at 64 years of age, about his childhood spent in Hong Kong. His father, an Admiralty civil servant, was posted there when...
~ Mum and Dad, by Joanna Trollope ~ Southern Spain. A middle-aged English expatriate couple, Gus and Monica, purchase some land and set up a vineyard. They abandon their oldest children in boarding schools in England, bring the youngest with...
Call it a sign of the times. After weeks of baking and cooking, I’ve now moved on to…reading cookbooks. Browsing my collection, Indian cookbooks mostly found on bookstore bargain tables over some 20-30 years, of course, I had to start...
~ The Virgin Suicides, by Jeffrey Eugenides ~ This was an early novel of Eugenides’, written in 1993 (his famous Middlesex was written in 2002; The Marriage Plot and Fresh Complaint in 2011 and 2017 respectively). It is actually quite...
Guest House for Young Widows, by Azadeh Moaveni The title is not apt, regretfully, for all its intriguing promise, because the guest house for widows actually only plays a very tiny part in this quite lengthy volume. The guest house...
Good Boy. My Life in Seven Dogs. by Jennifer Finney Boylan What a charming notion, to trace one’s life through the dogs in one’s past. The title of Jennifer Finney Boylan’s novel is immediately captivating to a dog-lover. Within two...
“Elegies and epitaphs, but also signs and wonders”
Love, food and ethnicity
1/3 of a WWII story, but another 2/3 of tedium
Empowerment through Erotica
Cocktail parties and culpability in Saigon
Vietnamese diasporic rom-com
A chronicle of familial mental illness
A feminist scientist in love
Women’s Words
Upward Mobility, still Tenuous
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