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'Tis by Frank McCourt |
I actually liked Frank McCourt's follow-up to 'Angela's Ashes'. It was very interesting the way it was written, as if he is putting into words what he is thinking, and how he is reacting to things at the time.
(bwl 2 March 2000) |
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Adultery by Richard B Wright |
This absorbing novel is about a happily married, middle-aged editor who attends the Frankfurt book fair and has an affaire with a younger colleague. On their way back to Toronto, they spend a weekend in England where, on a lonely beach, they make love. While Daniel sleeps, Denise leaves the car and is never again seen alive. The majority of the book depicts how people survive such enormous tragedies and, despite them, carry on.
(bwl 27 December 2004) |
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All my Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews |
A talented, funny, wealthy, successful concert pianist, with a husband who adores her, wants to die. Her younger sister, twice divorced with two kids, sleeping with the wrong men, is torn between trying to keep her beloved sister alive, and helping her to die. Poignancy, interspersed with humour, and beautifully drawn characters, it's a story of two very different sisters, closely bound, who forever keep each other's secrets.
(bwl 77 Summer 2015) |
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Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty |
Yvonne, a scientist working in London, is a self-described ordinary woman, happily and comfortably married with two grown-up children. Little does she know, when one day she meets a stranger and starts a passionate affair, how her life will change forever. It is - as one critic said - totally addictive and I could hardly stop reading until the very end.
(bwl 76 Spring 2015) |
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Becoming by Michelle Obama |
A well written, candid autobiography of her childhood and early life, leading up to meeting, falling in love and marrying Barack Obama. When he is elected President, she gives a compelling insight into life in the White House, outlining the juggling act that's needed to give her children, while living in the public eye, as normal a life as possible. No doubt is left about their deep, abiding love and mutual respect.
(bwl 92 Spring 2019) |
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Clara Callan by Richard B Wright |
This novel by a Canadian, for which he won the 2001 Giller Prize, takes place in the mid to late 1930s, and follows the lives of two very different sisters who have grown up in small-town Ontario. His amazing ability to get inside their minds is compelling and convincing. Their lives are depicted through Clara's diary entries, and through their correspondence when Nora moves away, and what unfolds makes an interesting and insightful story.
(bwl 14 July 2002) |
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Enduring Love by Ian McEwan |
After witnessing a balloon accident, a man's life is turned upside down by a very disturbed person - or is that the case? We find our man questioning whether he is imagining things, which is what his female partner thinks, and he has a hard time convincing others that HE is the normal one. Under McEwan's spell, we begin to wonder if what we read is what is really happening. I couldn't put it down.
(bwl 8 April 2001) |
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Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry |
Coomy and Jal live in a large apartment where they unwillingly care for their stepfather who has Parkinson's. They devise a despicable plot forcing Nariman into the cramped quarters which Roxana, his daughter and their half sister, shares with her husband and two sons. Mistry, brilliantly and brutally, outlines the raw everyday realities of this disease, and demonstrates to what lengths people, good or bad, will go in order to 'win' or to cope.
(bwl 21 November 2003) |
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How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents by Julia Alvarez |
Four sisters come from the Dominican Republic to New York in 1960, and begin a new life which is a far cry from the genteel one they have been used to. The book evokes well the challenge of being caught between two cultures, between hankering after the old while simultaneously trying to discard it. It starts in 1989 and works its way back, through 15 interconnected stories, to the time just before their exile.
(bwl 5 October 2000) |
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Latitudes Of Melt by Joan Clark |
In 1910, the St. Croix family rescue and raise a baby from an ice pan off Newfoundland's coast. Sea and ice are pivotal to the story, as are the child's magic qualities. Travelling between both shores of the Atlantic back and forth in time, her heritage is eventually revealed. It is beautifully written and, to quote Carol Shields, "... has wonderful moments of clarity and transcendence, but never loses sight of what an ordinary life is".
(bwl 15 October 2002) |
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Lessons by Ian McEwan |
Due to his beautiful writing, McEwan is able here to get away with a few irrelevant musings. His personal experience of abandonment, including that of his own children, comes very clearly through the narrative, so that his resentment and lasting hurt is palpable. He has true talent for creating an atmosphere, into which we are immediately drawn.
(bwl 107 Winter 2023) |
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Light on Snow by Anita Shreve |
While walking through woods, a man and his daughter find a newborn baby abandoned in the snow. For two people who have already suffered trauma through great loss, it is an especially shocking discovery. Through the 'voice' of the 12-year old, we come to understand and see how different her perceptions are from those of her father, the dilemmas they both face and how, in the end, forgiveness can overcome the ability to condemn.
(bwl 34 April 2006) |
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Memories - incorporating 'Perverse and Foolish' and 'Memory in a House' by Lucy M Boston |
Born in 1892, Lucy's life spanned two world wars and almost a century. Her life was interesting, and not at all conventional for a born Wesleyan. Especially fascinating - though at times in the book too detailed - was her total engrossment, indeed her intense love affair, with the Manor house and garden at Hemingford Grey, which she restored, re-designed and developed. She modestly never mentions the fact that she was also an extremely accomplished quilter.
(bwl 40 June 2007) |
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My Name is Eva by Suzanne Goldring |
Evelyn Is now an old lady living in a care home, but her brain and memory remain sharp. Her story starts in the Second World War after her husband is killed when, in order to do something useful with her own life, she joins the Wrens. The narrative includes letters which she writes to her beloved late husband, through which we learn more about her and her inner feelings, and her wish to avenge his death. Beautifully and poignantly written.
(bwl 97 Summer 2020) |
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No, I Don't Want to Join a Book Club by Virginia Ironside |
Written as a diary spanning 9 months, the author makes it appear quite personal. Her descriptions of being more than middle-aged are brilliant - she describes especially well the realisation that we actually experience feelings which we assumed we never would. It's funny, it's poignant and, at times, brutally frank. I laughed out loud, I shed some tears, and I thought "How true".
(bwl 50 March 2009) |
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October by Richard B Wright |
A retired professor travels to England to visit his daughter, Susan, who has been diagnosed with breast cancer. By chance he meets a crippled friend of his adolescence, Gabriel, whom he's not seen for sixty years. This reunion and what ensues intertwines with his struggle to accept his daughter's possible death. Although I was drawn into the well written story, I found the way he dealt with Susan's devastating illness rather too impersonal.
(bwl 44 February 2008) |
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Red Dust Road: An Autobiographical Journey by Jackie Kay |
Her own story - "I couldn't have made it up" - by a woman of mixed race who was adopted by a wonderful Scottish couple. While she loves them wholeheartedly, she needs to discover her roots, and decides to search for her biological parents. She faces mixed reactions to her quest, but bravely continues to a mostly satisfactory conclusion. Being a poet, Kay's writing is often lyrical and emotional - the book makes for an interesting read.
(bwl 59 Winter 2011) |
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Restless by William Boyd |
This story of a young woman, recruited in 1939 by the British Secret Service, I found a most interesting insight into the mind of a spy. It shows how such a profession permeates the whole person, so that for the rest of her life she cannot avoid the fearful mindset of living under cover,
trusting no one but her own family. It's a story of intrigue, of passion and, ultimately, of betrayal.
(bwl 49 January 2009) |
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Tamarind Mem by Anita Rau Badami |
Two voices tell the story. Kamini's perception of her parents' relationship, their interactions and those of her and her sister, Roopa, are beautifully evoked. In 'hearing' conversations spoken in lilting accents, and somewhat stilted English, we get to know the family and are caught up in their lives. We want to know more about the veiled mysteries, the tension that occurs behind closed doors. It is when the mother speaks that we start to understand.
(bwl 10 August 2001) |
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The Chimney Sweeper's Boy by Barbara Vine |
I thought this was excellent. It takes the form of a novel as well as being a 'thriller', and I like the way she interweaves the 'human' side of the story with keeping us on the book as to what 'really happened'.
(bwl 3 May 2000) |
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The Dogs of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst |
Paul Iverson's wife Lexy is found dead having fallen from an apple tree, or did she jump? Desperate to discover how she really died, Paul tries to teach her dog, Lorelei, to speak. Lexy's whimsical personality, her erratic behaviour, and the passionate relationship between them emerges through retrospection. The daily agony of grief, and the extraordinary behaviour of a normally rational Linguistics Professor, is brilliantly depicted, as is the heart wrenching story of the dog.
(bwl 32 November 2005) |
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The Forest Lover by Susan Vreeland |
This novel about Canadian artist, Emily Carr, richly describes the sight and smell of the vast forests of British Columbia. One senses the tension emanating from Carr's straitlaced and God fearing family who strongly disapprove of her deep affinity with the aboriginal people, and of her fascination with their culture. For a while Carr studied art in Paris but her heart and soul were on the West Coast from where her greatest inspiration came.
(bwl 26 October 2004) |
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The Glass Room by Simon Mawer |
In Czechoslovakia, with war and Nazism looming, a wealthy Jewish business man and his Gentile wife, commission an avant-garde Architect to build a house. We follow their lives, along with that of the house, the frightening effect on people of power, of bigotry, and what human beings will do to survive. From the very first page, I was immersed in the underlying passions and desires of those involved, and utterly fascinated by the story.
(bwl 63 Winter 2011) |
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The Navigator Of New York by Wayne Johnston |
Whether about St. John's, Newfoundland, the icy north or the bustling metropolis of New York, Johnston's descriptions are rich and powerful. In 1888 at the age of 17, Devlin Stead, a doctor's son, receives a letter which changes his life. The story depicts Devlin's search for his origins and the lives of Arctic explorers, with whom he becomes involved, who will go to any lengths to claim the fame of having reached the North Pole.
(bwl 18 April 2003) |
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The Outcast by Sadie Jones |
A first novel by this young writer, it is the story of abuse in a middle-class, churchgoing community in the 1950s. An unstoppable read, rather like a stream of consciousness coming out from somewhere, it compels one to keep going. It's hard to see a shattered boy struggling to cope with his neglected grief, while those around him remain in blind denial.
(bwl 50 March 2009) |
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The Private Patient by P D James |
Once again, a beautiful piece of writing; James is the poet of mystery, and therefore a delight to read. Perhaps, at times, she is inclined to over-detailed passages, but I marvel that she uses so many often neglected words of the very rich English language. She kept me on the hook until the end and, sadly, to the last of Commander Dalgliesh.
(bwl 49 January 2009) |
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The Reader by Bernhard Schlink |
A 15 year-old boy has hepatitis, and one day on the street becomes extremely ill. A young woman comes to his rescue, takes him to her apartment, helps to clean him up and then delivers him home. We learn what happens when he has recovered and takes her a bunch of flowers, and then again much later. It is a riveting and intriguing story written in two quite separate parts.
(bwl 44 February 2008) |
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The Stowaway by Robert Hough |
An engrossing adventure story of a Romanian stowaway on the "Maersk Dubai", and the Filipino crewman who hides him and protects him from the ship's officers. The book is based on what really happened in 1996; however, though it is mostly fact, there is some fictionalization of characters. I found it a most interesting and compelling novel, with some very heart wrenching moments . . .
(bwl 50 March 2009) |
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The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware |
Full of tension, intrigue, not to mention scary, it's well written, and kept me on the edge of my seat to the very last page. An excellent read, especially right now when so many of us are cocooning at home.
(bwl 96 Spring 2020) |
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The Two of Us - My Life with John Thaw by Sheila Hancock |
While describing both of their lives, from childhood on, Sheila Hancock so very sensitively interjects paragraphs, written in the present, about her thoughts and emotions after losing her beloved husband. Times were not always easy for them, especially in dealing with Thaw's alcoholism and black moods, but their marriage endured. It was indeed a true, passionate love story.
(bwl 34 April 2006) |
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Without You There Is No Us: My secret life teaching the sons of North Korea's elite by Suki Kim |
A journalist, born and raised in South Korea and living in New York, passes herself off as a teacher and missionary - a dangerous undertaking - and spends 6 months living in North Korea under the repressive regime of Kim Jong-il. It's a fascinating insight into a whole civilization of people whose knowledge of the outside world is constantly controlled by their "Great Leader". It is no wonder that she lives in fear of her true identity being discovered.
(bwl 84 Spring 2017) |
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