As I mentioned in the post about The Rebel Angels, the first book in Robertson Davies' Cornish Triology, I had read What's Bred in the Bone years ago and had remembered only a vaguely positive view of it. Well, it is a big chunk of a book, big in that it is stuffed with great writing, lots of riveting characters, surprising turns of events, and one stunner of a coincidence. It...
It was Tony‘s recommendation that encouraged me to read Amélie Nothomb, a Belgian writer who writes in French. I was impressed by Fear and Trembling, one of her autobiographical novellas and decided to try another of her novellas. This one edged out of my comfort zone and then lurched farther from it, but I made it through. A retirement age couple who by the way had been married since they...
It was a mention of him by Tony that prompted me to read Robertson Davies, but I began with The Rebel Angels because it is the first in the Cornish Trilogy and What's Bred in the Bone is next and I did read that a million years ago and have no memory of it other than a vaguely positive feeling. So now I'll read the trilogy and set down my thoughts about it. Though I was...
Alice McDermott tells the story of a place and a time through her characters. I found this true of the previous book of hers that I read, After This, as well as this one. The lifetime of the main character, Marie, begins in perhaps the mid-1920s. Marie's Irish family lives in Brooklyn and McDermott paints a clear and focused picture of those years of Marie's childhood. Every...
When I saw Ron Charles' enthusiastic review in The Washington Post, I was moved to read this book. He warns potential readers to beware of "diligent summaries that might suffocate its pleasures" and I agree that the pleasures of the book are its central figure Tooly with a cast of unlikely characters and the complex way we learn of their true selves and connections. The story...
Alison Lurie's best known book is The War Between the Tates, which, like Foreign Affairs, has "Corinth" (or Cornell as we know it) University as the backdrop. In this book two English professors are in London for extended research grants. Though they meet socially upon occasion, their connection is distant. Vinnie is in her mid-50s, considers herself...
This novella was loaned to me by my friend Molly. The story is an inspirational legend published in the mid-1990s about Athabascan Indians in the Yukon River Valley in Alaska. That's in the Artic Circle, so it's pretty cold and dark there. In a particularly cold winter the chief of a clan concludes that to survive they must leave behind two old women. We are told that the two had...
Amélie Nothomb has written several short autobiographical novels; this one won the Grand Prix de la Académie Française. She was born in Japan as her father was a Belgian diplomat. After attending the University of Brussels, she became a translator for a large firm in Japan. Fear and Trembling is about a translator named Amélie with a year-long contract with a large company in Japan where she...
This is my second book by this author; I read The Other Side of You in 2007 so my memory of it is a bit vague. It was engaging but I wrote about some reservations relating to gender matters. I was moved to read this one by Annabel's House of Books' awarding it the book with the Best Sense of Place for 2013. Having loved the town of Chartres as well as the cathedral when we...
Having now read the third book in the Ruth Galloway series, I can say Elly Griffiths has created a pleasing setting and appealing characters. Ruth is a forensic archaeologist who teaches at a university on the Norfolk coast in England who is called in to help the police when bones are found. Nelson, the detective she has worked with is tall, gruff, good at his job and happily married. In the...