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...
Shattering Ceilings
First woman Vice-President. First black woman Vice-President. First Indian-American Vice-President. First daughter of immigrants to be elected Vice-President. And what a fantastic speech she gave! Calm, confident, capable, tough, conscious of her roots, a special call-out to black women, 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...
Criminal Divination
~ Troubled Blood, by Robert Galbraith ~ The latest Robert Galbraith is quite the tome, clocking in at an impressive 927 pages. Goody, I thought. Many evenings and weekends of reading a capable author showing off her craft, her undeniable...
Passion
~ Fortune Rocks, by Anita Shreve ~ This is one of Shreve’s older novels and I confess I was not expecting to enjoy it as much as I did. It is also about double the length of most of her...
Lightweight confection
~ Baking cakes in Kigali, by Gaile Parkin ~ Set squarely in Mma Ramotswe territory is Gaile Parkin’s Baking Cakes in Kigali, featuring a plump entrepreneurial African woman who solves human problems along with the cakes she sells. There are...
Shallow Inspection
~ The Year of Living Danishly: Uncovering the Secrets of the World’s Happiest Country. By Helen Russell ~ This is one of those rather unsatisfying books where your interest in the topic or content keeps you reading, but where the...
Existential Coming-of-Age, with an American Multilingual Twist
Coming-of-age millenial stories must be thick on the ground these days. Without seeking them out, several have come my way in the last few months — two by Sally Rooney, one by Naoise Dolan, and now, Elif Batuman’s The Idiot,...
Double Life
The novel opens with the protagonist, Andrew (Andy) Nocera) being tried in court for being caught “giving a blow job off Interstate 85 one hot summer night”.The sentence is one year’s probation, during which there must be no more arrests,...
Pythons and Politics
Lifelong Florida resident Carl Hiassen has carved himself a unique niche in the 45-odd years he’s been writing novels. Set firmly in his home state, his novels typically feature a wild cast of environmental activists, law personnel, corrupt politicians and...
Complexities of a Marriage
If you ever wanted to get inside a marriage of two mismatched personalities, this is an excellent novel for that experience, in so far as one can ever get ‘inside’ someone else’ marriage. Tyler does an excellent job of somehow...
Foreign Language
Naoise Dolan’s debut novel, Exciting Times, will inevitably be compared to Sally Rooney’s Normal People and Conversations with Friends. Dolan and Rooney are both young female Irish authors, and both write about young female protagonists who are very self-aware, intelligent,...
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