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January 27, 2018

Mr. Hogarth’s Will by Catherine Helen Spence

January 27, 2018

27January

Thanks to Lisa at ANZ LitLovers I have spent a happy week reading a book with the writing style of Jane Austen and the political sensibility of Ezra Klein. Remarkable, given that Catherine Helen Spence wrote the book in 1865. Financial difficulties caused her family emigrate to Australia from Scotland when she was 14; her father died a few years after their arrival and she had to support the...

January 23, 2018

A Hundred Small Lessons by Ashley Hay

January 23, 2018

23January

This is my (and her) third novel and what a satisfying experience it was to listen to it. It centers on a modest house in Brisbane and the two families that lived in it sequentially. First was Elsie, Clem, and their twins. After the twins were grown, had children of their own, and Clem had been dead for nearly 40 years, Elsie was moved into a facility a short walk away. The house was...

January 18, 2018

Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout

January 18, 2018

18January

The masterful storyteller Elizabeth Strout has written a series of connected stories that are each dramatic and engaging. In each we learn that whatever events occurs in a person's life, anything does continue to be possible. For me the best was the first. Tommy Guptill had a successful dairy farm; the night it burned down he had a realization that he experienced as the presence of God...

January 13, 2018

Bellevue Square by Michael Redhill

January 13, 2018

13January

The winner of this year's Giller Prize for Canadian literature was a big puzzle for me: near the end I realized I was not going to get all the pieces to fit together. It is the first in a trilogy, so perhaps all will become clear after two more books. It begins with a woman who describes her bookshop in Toronto. All seemed pretty straight-forward, though I was alerted to her weirdness...

January 11, 2018

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

January 11, 2018

11January

This National Book Award winner is truly an amazing book. I hardly know how to convey its strength. The narrative passes among three characters: A 13-year-old boy, his addicted mother, and one of the unburied. As unpromising as this seems, the story of a road trip by Leonie, her son Jojo, her three-year-old daughter, and her druggie friend Misty to pick up her boyfriend (the kids' father)...

December 28, 2017

Chemistry of Tears by Peter Carey

December 28, 2017

28December

I do like books with multiple storylines and setting them in different centuries is appealing. A woman working in a London museum of clocks and other mechanisms learns her long-time lover died suddenly. Catherine must grieve secretly as he was married and had children. Her boss who knows the secret finds a project for her that will isolate her from colleagues as she recovers. The project comes...

December 23, 2017

The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott

December 23, 2017

23December

I have enjoyed two books by this author (Someone and After This), both of which I admired and appreciated. This one, as I read in a description, begins with a suicide and ends with a possible murder, so the reader is prepared for grimness. The Catholic Church always figures in McDermott’s books whose characters are generally Irish. In this one we see the church in both a good light and in a...

December 22, 2017

Favorite Books for 2017

December 22, 2017

22December

I have now dropped the designation of 10 favorite books for the year as I usually have a larger number. This year I chose 11 of the 50 books I read. Four on my favorites list were among the ten books by Australians. As always these are books that I read this year, not necessarily published in 2017. The Boy Behind the Curtain by Tim Winton. I found this audiobook so appealing that I...

December 21, 2017

Real American by Julie Lythcott-Haims

December 21, 2017

21December

When I saw Jenna Wortham’s tweet saying this book about mixed race doesn’t a) make her cringe or b) center whiteness to talk about blackness, I figured it was a book I should read. Jenna Wortham, who writes for the NYT, was in Charlottesville this fall for a panel about race and news media. She was the most articulate speaker even with Jamelle Bouie on the stage. Julie Lythcott-Haims...

December 13, 2017

Books to Read