Another remarkable work from Colm Tóibín. I find short stories harder to manage, but I was captivated by these. I will write about a few that were particularly poignant for me. The first, “The Journey to Galway,” tells about a woman hearing the news that her son, a fighter pilot apparently during the Second World War, was killed. She knows immediately the telegram brings bad news as...
What a treat to listen to a book written by a Pulitzer Prize winning historian about her travels to historical sites, museums, and iconic spots throughout the country. She included places of interest such as Disneyland and the World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta, as well as Williamsburg, Monticello, and the Alamo in her explorations. In the introduction read by Beverly herself, she said she visited...
Getting this collection of short stories off to an appropriate start, the first story features “the typing lady,” someone the narrator observes typing in the library. The typing lady is described as “nondescript: oldish, in her fifties or sixties, Asian-looking, with black-framed glasses and gray-streaked hair,” so you know right away the narrator is describing the author...
It was in 2008 that I read my first Maggie O’Farrell book, so, yes, I am a fan. Land begins in the 1860s, more than a decade after the famine; Tomàs is creating a map for the “redcoats,” those oppressors of Ireland. Tomàs and his wife Phina, both lost their families during the famine and managed to survive their time in the workhouse and somehow Tomàs acquired the skills needed...
This makes seven of Ann Patchett’s books I’ve read (including the beloved pre-blog Bel Canto), but the first I’ve listened to her read. Her voice had become very familiar to me as she often appears in my Facebook feed in her bookstore talking about books she loves. Hearing her read this novel was like having an ice cold drink in this heat or snuggling under a warm blanket on a...
After Ann Patchett spoke about a 2009 book of short stories by this author, I found this recent one. If you are hoping to read an uplifting book with lovable characters, you should read the title of the book more carefully than I did. The author is a Pakistani-American; he was born in the US, lived in Pakistan until he was thirteen, returned to the US for education and became a lawyer. He now...
When Reading Matters listed the finalists in the Kerry Group Novel of the Year Award, this book went on my list to read and it moved to the top of the list when it won the award. It tells the story of three hard-living housemates in Belfast just as they are turning thirty. It manages to be both funny and sad, as the women choose drug and alcohol-filled nights and messy love affairs over...
After I read Angela Flournoy’s The Wilderness, I learned from Cathy that she had read the author’s first novel and was enthusiastic. Thanks, Cathy, I am so happy to have read this. At the outset I wondered how a novel set in 2008 in Detroit, a city that had been in economic decline beginning in the 1950s could possibly bring me joy. The focus is the Turner family whose life on Yarrow...
It was a review in the NYT of a recent book by this author that took me to this one. I hadn’t heard of this author before and know little about her, but I did read that her mother is Korean and that her French father left Korea before she was born. This book is a novella set in South Korea very near the border with North Korea in a beach town that is almost empty in the winter. The unnamed...
It’s hard to believe Elizabeth Strout is still writing books that capture us and take us into a world she has created. And this one is a world we haven’t been to before: no one in Olive Kitteridge’s orbit appears in this book. Olive herself made a very brief appearance when Artie, the main character, recalled reading a book about a grumpy old woman from Maine named Olive...