If you love nice long sentences, this is a good book for you. It was published in 1908, the year my father was born, and is set in Waterford, Ireland. The Irish author was successful, having been the first author to have two top-ten best selling books on The New York Times list in one year (1905). She died when she was only 36. It tells the struggle of one family to become middle class in...
The Portrait by Antoine Laurain
I am a fan of this author and have read four of his books that I find very clever and quite fun. My favorite was the first one I read, The President’s Hat, that tells a tale of François Mitterrand’s hat changing the lives of the people who happened to have it for a time. I read this one because I discovered it is in the public library. The Portrait is narrated by a man who works as an...
Intimacies by Katie Kitamura
It was the review in Reading Matters that took me to this book and the author’s focus on the importance of precise language that kept me reading. The main character is a translator at “the Court” in the Hague, an unnamed international court that brings charges against those accused of genocide, crimes against humanity, or war crimes. She had left New York after her father died...
James by Percival Everett
After Percival Everett’s visit to the book festival here in Charlottesville, I heard from Laura that she she was moved to read this book and liked it very much. Knowing that it was a retelling of Huckleberry Finn, I decided reacquaint myself with that story especially after she added that there was a notable surprise change in the story. What I did was less reading than skimming. It was as...
Alice by Stacy A. Cordery
The Alice in question is Alice Roosevelt Longworth, who became known as a White House Princess and then a Washington Power Broker, as the subtitle has it. Her life began inauspiciously: her mother died within two days of her birth, leaving her father Teddy Roosevelt bereft, especially so, as his mother died that same day. She was born in 1880, had her debutant ball in the White House in 1902...
The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng
This one will certainly be on my list of favorites for the year. The story is set in 1910 and 1921 in Malaysia and is told in the style of Somerset Maugham’s stories from that location, and is written by a person whose ethnic group was on the receiving end of the racism of the British. While the casual racism and homophobia of the characters are apparent, they become fully human. The story...
Restless Dolly Maunder by Kate Grenville
The Australian Kate Grenville is one of my favorite authors; I especially love her books The Lieutenant, The Idea of Perfection, and One Life: My Mother’s Story. This one is a fictionalized account of her grandmother, Dolly Maunder Russell. In 1881, the year Dolly was born, a new law required that children remain in school until they were 14 years old. That is how it came to be that her...
Sally on the Rocks by Winifred Boggs
Sally is a young woman who returns to the small village in England where she grew up when she finds herself “on the rocks.” The book was published in 1915; the war had put an end to her adventures in Paris. It was in response to a letter from a troublemaker in Little Crampton suggesting she could marry Mr. Bingley, the stodgy bank manager, that she returns to the home of her guardian...
Panenka by Rónán Hession
Recently I read a book that extolled the virtues of cricket; this one centers on a love/hate thing with soccer, or football, as they call it in Ireland. First, I learned that a Panenka is a surprise move, kicking the ball directly in the middle of the goal in a shootout kick with the hope that the goalie will leap to one side or the other to block the ball. It is named for Antonin Panenka, a...
Spies in Canaan by David Park
I have previously read two books by the Irish writer David Park and think frequently of one of them, Travelling in a Strange Land. Though I don’t remember where I read about this one, I knew it was about an American CIA operative in Vietnam at the very end of the war and some consequent events 40 years later. Mike describes himself as a “prairie boy” whose family was mainstream...