I greatly admired Tessa Hadley’s The Past and have thought about reading other books by her. She seemed to sketch her characters effortlessly without making them single dimension figures or being cruel or dismissive. This one begins with a focus on Paul whose mother had just died. I couldn’t stop thinking of The Stranger by Camus; which begins, “Today Maman died.” The...
It was an endorsement by Nancy Pearl, the librarian who inspired an action figure, that brought me to this book. I haven’t read a book that was both this gripping and satisfying in ages. Several times during this unlikely tale, the John McEnroe phrase came to mind: “You cannot be serious,” given the coincidences and exaggerations that came up. Along with those excesses came...
I have read two of Bernard MacLaverty’s books, one in the pre-blog days (Grace Notes) and The Anatomy School and am very much a fan of his work. This one from 2017 is also worthy, if you can manage the bleakness. An older couple, Stella and Gerry, are preparing to leave their home in Glasgow for a short trip to Amsterdam. They were from Northern Ireland and had left to escape the Troubles...
I’ve just finished a book that will be in my favorites list this year, perhaps at the very top. I found it in the NYT list of 100 notable books of 2021. The aspect of the book that I loved most was the web of connections among the characters that becomes apparent as you read the vignettes. The connections often are fleeting and not always key to the plot. For example the book begins by...
Years ago someone told us about the wonderful JP Morgan Library and Museum in New York and we visited it several times, including once for a midday music performance. So, when I read about The Personal Librarian, a fictional book about Belle da Costa Greene, the long-time librarian hired by J.P. Morgan to help catalog and build his collection of rare manuscripts, I didn’t hesitate. The non...
What a treat this 1936 novella is! I can’t remember where I saw a recommendation for it, but when I realized the author had written The Makioka Sisters, I knew it would be worthwhile finding it. And Interlibrary Loan came to the rescue. In only 99 pages the author creates a complicated household that focuses on a cat, Lily. There’s the slovenly Shozo, the Man of the title who loves...
This is my third Amor Towles book; The Rules of Civility was a treat from beginning to end and while A Gentleman in Moscow wallowed in the perfection of that gentleman, it too was irresistible. And once again, I find that when you are in the clutches of an Amor Towles book, it’s hard to resist. Set in 1954, the story unfolds in chapters told by or focusing on each character that end just as...
Dorothy recommended (and loaned me) this book and I thank her for it. It begins with the author explaining that Nesje, the haymaker, was his great-grandfather, born in 1838, and that though he heard many stories about Nesje and had some documents relating to his life, he would have to “invent him out of air and nothingness.” This he did, using “the light over Molde and...
Before I began to read this book set in Cyprus, I read the part of the Wikipedia entry for that country about the long struggles between the Greeks and Turks, especially the events of 1974 and found that background very helpful. Many elements make this a pleasing book. First, the familiar story of teenagers from opposite sides of a conflict in love; Romeo and Juliet leap to mind. Kostas, Greek...
This account of a fictitious popular interracial music duo begins in the 1970s and ends with their revival in 2016 and is a tour de force. Opal and Nev are an unlikely twosome; when they met, Opal was an amateur with barely any experience and Nev had recently arrived from Britain with more expectations than promise in his musical ambitions. The story is told from the vantage point a year or so...