Tony’s enthusiasm brought me to this book, and a better audiobook I cannot imagine. It is the story of a young woman making her way in London during the blitz. Thinking she was applying for a newspaper job, she found herself typing for a failing women’s magazine from another era. Emmy lives with her friend from home Bunty in the upstairs of Bunty’s grandmother’s house...
I happened on this book by a strange route. In my last book, Whiskey & Charlie, the NATO phonetic alphabet (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc) is a key component of its structure. In looking around Wikipedia, a movie title caught my eye, Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot (yes, pretty funny title), and I learned it was based on this book by journalist Kim Barker. The NYT review of the book says the author...
Whiskey and Charlie are twins born in Britain whose family moved to Australia when they were teens. The book opens with Charlie sitting with Whiskey in the hospital after an accident left Whiskey in a coma. Chapters with scenes at Whiskey’s bedside are written in sans serif type to distinguish them from the story of their growing up and then growing apart. That story is told in chapters...
It was Reading Matters’ recent review that was the impetus for reading this 1986 book written by the author of the better known Revolutionary Road. It begins with Charles Shepard’s disappointment that the war ends just as he arrives in Europe in 1918. He stays in the army until it’s clear his deteriorating eyesight has limited his career. His wife does not thrive, and after...
The stories in this collection of Chekhov’s work were translated by Nicolas Pasternak Slater, nephew of Boris Pasternak. I am new to his stories and I rarely read short story collections. It was Tony’s enthusiasm that led me to this particular collection. I don’t know the reasons for putting these particular stories together. In a few of the stories, Burkin, a high school...
Tim Winton’s most recent fiction is yet another amazing work. The narrator is a teenage boy who begins his story telling that his father has once again beaten him, leaving one eye swollen shut. Later Jackson returns to find his father had died when the car he was repairing collapsed on him. Jackson, believing he will be accused of killing his father, runs in hopes of getting far enough away...
Thirty-eight year old Tsukiko Omachi recounts the story of her connection with her former high school teacher Harutsuna Matsumoto who she encounters by chance while drinking in a bar. She didn’t remember the name of this man 30 years her senior, so she calls him Sensei, and continues to do so. They meet by chance over many months, drinking saké and eating together, most often at a...
The narrator tells the story of leaving home in Bangalore as a drifting young adult to search for a Kashmiri man she knew from childhood. From the start Shalini says that her privilege and naiveté had caused her to do great harm to others in that troubled area. The reader waits for that blow, as Shalini described the family dynamics as she is growing up and at the same time told of the events...
I can’t think when I’ve read a more addictive book. I was hooked from the moment I began reading. SPOILER ALERT! I may be more revelatory than the usual review, but I think most let you know the basic story is that one and a half years into his marriage to Celestial, Roy, a black man, was falsely accused of rape and was sentenced to 12 years in jail. Roy, the son of hardworking poor...
This is Marilynne Robinson’s first novel; here’s what I wrote about two of her others: Gilead and Lila. She certainly gives me much to think about and I find that I see things in a different light from one moment to the next (or one decade to the next). It begins this way: “My name is Ruth. I grew up with my younger sister, Lucille, under the care of my grandmother, Mrs...