Evie Wyld’s first book After the Fire, a Still Small Voice, has descriptions nearly as searing as her second, the Miles Franklin award-winning All the Birds, Singing. The two story lines are about two men, a generation apart. The story of Frank, which occurs in the present is the dominant story and begins with him leaving Canberra for a shack his grandparents had owned outside a small...
I have listened to three books by Louise Penny in the Armand Gamache series. First I read How the Light Gets In (the last in the series) and then read the first. Now that I have read two more, I decided to write about the remainder of the series on this post as I read them rather than writing a new post for each book. The Cruelest Month. The old Hadley house continues to be a site of the horror...
The beginning of this lovely print journey is the arrival of an ocean liner in Cherbourg; a young couple with an impossible amount of luggage struggle to make their way first to Mont St. Michel and eventually to a château some distance from Blois. We eventually learn these Americans have booked a stay in the château in advance but otherwise are unscheduled for a 4-month trip to Europe in the...
Set in a village in Canada shortly after the end of World War I, this story of the struggle to return to something close to normal life focuses on Kenan, who lost use of one arm and one eye and was terribly scarred. He has returned home, but at the outset never leaves the house. We learn about his strained connection with his wife Tress, his exchange of letters with another surviving veteran, and...
The author of this winner of the Stella Prize for 2015 was inspired by stories of the Melbourne art world in the 1930s and 1940s, a time when traditionalists were denouncing modern art and Australian artists were seeking to make "Australian art," rather than seeking European acceptance. Other than a few historical figures, Robert Menzies, for one, the book creates fictional characters...
My ten favorite books list this year may have more than ten books: this is another one that I admired greatly. I read another book by Deirdre Madden (Molly Fox’s Birthday) and like this one as well or better. The Buckley family in Dublin during the flush economic times is the subject of this lovingly told story that centers on Fintan, a man who loves a good hearty lunch and immediately...
The subtitle of this book, Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes, gives you the idea. A more accurate, though less catchy subtitle would be Jokes That Illustrate Some Philosophical Concepts; I doubt anyone had any "Aha" moments. And if the joke made me laugh, sometimes I forgot the concept being illustrated. Usually the joke did make me laugh and I made the connection with the...
The third in the classic trilogy The Fortunes of Richard Mahony by Henry Handel Richardson (pseudonym of Ethel Florence Lindsay Richardson) continues the fictionalized account of Richardson's parents in Ballarat, Melbourne and in the bush during the second half of the 19th century. I read The Way Home last year and Australia Felix the year before. When we left them, Richard...
It was a worry that this novel wouldn't be as wonderful as Nina Stibbe's series of letters written to her sister while she was a nanny in London (Love, Nina). Turns out I needn't have worried. It was just as funny, perhaps even more so. When you read the plot summary, you may assume I'm kidding. The 9-year-old Lizzie, her older sister, and their younger brother leave London with...
George's Grand Tour by Caroline Vermalle. Fun travel-in-France book from the viewpoint of an elderly man defying the young. (Reading Matters). Helen Macdonald. H is for Hawk. Emily Bitto's The Strays. Won the Stella Prize. Ann Enright, The Green Road Kate Atkinson: A God in Ruins (NYT review) Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker, 1962. Reviewed by guest in Reading Matters. At the...