CategoryOther Reviews

Ghazzah Street is in Jeddah where Frances goes to join her husband, an engineer already working in Saudi Arabia.  The book was written in 1988 after the greatest boom time there; oil prices were down.  Frances and Andrew were expats working in Africa when they were tempted by a job for Andrew for high pay with unlimited resources for building.  As it turned out in so many areas...

I eventually concluded that I had read this book before, but that was no obstacle to enjoying it.  It's like daydreaming; always a pleasure.  A married couple who are both English professors from the University of Wisconsin and francophiles hit upon the scheme of buying a house in the Dordogne region of France where they would live each summer. The town they eventually settled on...

Muriel Spark is the author of an audiobook I thoroughly enjoyed for its light touch and great humor, called Memento Mori, as well as her best known book, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.  The latter is heavy on the message (as I remember from the film) and is a great contrast to Memento Mori.   This one is in the middle of these two.  In the midst of loving memories of the...

The narrator of Remembering the Bones is a Canadian who was born the same day as the Queen.  On her 80th birthday she, along with 98 others have been invited to celebrate with the Queen and as she begins her journey, her car crashes into a ravine near her house and in her helpless state, she realizes only the Queen will realize she is missing.  She keeps herself going by reflecting on...

This long saga gives you glimpses into some amazing worlds; most interestingly, twentieth century Addis Ababa.  The food, climate, and politics are a backdrop or sometimes a key part of this story which begins with the death in childbirth of a nun that no one knew was pregnant.  Even the father of the twins was surprised and he flees the scene, leaving the mission in Addis Ababa...

This is the true story of two Ukrainian Jewish sisters who miraculously survived Hitler and Stalin.  Jhanna and Frina were child prodigies who were offered scholarships to the music conservancies in both Kharkov and Moscow when they were very young.  When the Nazis came to Kharkov, they narrowly escaped the fate of their parents and grandparents and lived by the grace of strangers who...

This book was published in London and is not available in the US at this point (it is available at Alderman Library).  I read about it in the blog Reading Matters, which had an enthusiastic endorsement of it. The narrator, a successful Irish playwright who lives in London, casually and companionably recounts to us her life and the lives of her friends over the course of a single day. ...

The sequel to Chocolat, this book is set in Montmartre in Paris.  The Butte, as it is referred to, is painted as a village from another era.  Each short chapter tells the story from the point of view of each of the major characters:  Zozie, the wicked witch; Vianne, the wizard of chocolate that we know from Chocolat; and her daughter Anouk.  The various characters from...

This is the second Aimée Leduc book for me; Aimée is the half French, half American private investigator who lives in Paris and foils evildoers at the highest levels.  The author is very specific about location and has a map in the front of the book so you can see where everything occurs. The Marais is the old Jewish quarter of Paris; the murder victim is an old Jewish woman who is marked...

The main character is Renée, a concierge in an apartment building for the very rich in Paris.  She hides her erudition from the philistines who live in the building, and reads philosophy, watches wonderful films, and listens to great music in secret to preserve her comfortable life.  She is described by a 10 year old tenant (who also finds everyone else unworthy) as having "the...