Six novels in one.
The word genius is bandied about in several of the reviews I read of David Mitchell’s fourth novel, Cloud Atlas, and so I decided to read it, thinking Shakespeare, Beethoven, Einstein, Michaelangelo, etc., people who in my opinion, fill this billing. I found no genius in Cloud Atlas, but what I did [...]
June 13, 2009
June 10, 2009
Breathing in Art
Reading Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark is like breathing in art, instead of air. It’s in the words chosen by the author, in Thea’s artistic pursuit of her voice (a lark, of course, known for its beautiful songs), and in Thea’s love of the painting, ”The Song of the Lark,” by [...]
June 10, 2009
Full Circle
In July, I read Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk, a writer I’d never read before. Upon finishing the novel, I immediately wanted to reread it. Instead, I began a journey that has lasted four months: reading each of Rachel Cusk’s books in the order she wrote them. With this post, we come full circle, [...]
June 9, 2009
A brief synopsis:
A lost child…
On the eve of the first world war, a little girl is found abandoned on a ship to Australia. A mysterious woman called the Authoress had promised to look after her – but the Authoress has disappeared without a trace.
A terrible secret…
On the night of her twenty-first birthday, Nell O’Connor learns [...]
June 8, 2009
Back in 2006, before my blogging days, I read The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon and it became the book in which I’ve compared everything else to since. When The Angel’s Game came up for review on Shelf Awareness, I knew I had to read it as soon as possible. I dropped [...]
June 8, 2009
Lionel Shriver’s We Need To Talk About Kevin is one of most intense, disturbing, well-written, and deeply affecting books I have ever read. I finished it in awe of Shriver’s considerable writing talent, as well as the horrifyingly real, unforgettable story she created. I’ve struggled with this review, which is unlike me - usually I [...]
June 7, 2009
In her debut novel, The Help, author Kathryn Stockett goes inside the homes of 1960s Mississippi to show the relationships between young white women and the black maids they employ.
Skeeter, a new Ole Miss graduate, is back home in Jackson, single and living with her parents again. Her two best friends, Elizabeth and Hilly, are [...]
June 7, 2009
Synopsis:
During the Nazis’ brutal siege of Leningrad, Lev Beniov is arrested for looting and thrown into the same cell as a handsome deserter named Kolya. Instead of being executed, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an outrageous directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful Soviet [...]
June 5, 2009
I’m a little afraid of short stories. What I crave most in fiction is depth, characterization, richly drawn and fully fleshed-out people and places — not halved and truncated stories of people about whom I will ultimately feel nothing, if only because I never really got a chance to know them.
Jhumpa Lahiri’s stunning Interpreter of [...]