Shortlisted for the Canadian Giller Prize, The Betrayers has a wonderfully simple plotline that the author uses to great advantage. Baruch Kotler, a well-known government official in Israel has run away with his young mistress Leora Rosenberg as their affair was made public when he refused to be blackmailed into silence about his disagreement with a government policy. Baruch and Leora, both...
This is my third Armand Gamache police procedural by Louise Penny and the second one in the series. There are more events in this one about the overarching plot which culminated in How the Light Gets In. I'm glad I read that one first, so I recognize these plot developments; otherwise I would just be mystified. Once again we hear Ruth insult everyone within earshot, food is lovingly...
Gilead, Marilynne Robinson's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, is the religious ruminations of an elderly preacher near death writing to his young son. Lila is the story of the mother of that son, a surprise love who came into the preacher John Ames' life so late. The setting is small town Iowa, sometime after the Depression. Lila was stolen away from her parents and sure death...
This is my fourth Colm Toibin and I found it to be yet another wonderful book. It is story of an Irish woman whose husband died while she had two young sons at home and two daughters old enough to be away at school. The most mundane aspects of her life are revealed with the same deliberate calm voice as the more dramatic moments as she comes to terms with the loss of her beloved husband. The...
The third book in Davies' Cornish Trilogy (The Rebel Angels and What's Bred in the Bones are the first two) adds new characters to the familiar Darcourt, Maria, Arthur and the late Frances. Much of this book centers on the creation of an opera based on sketches and bits of music by E.T.A. Hoffman about Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere. This echoes Frances' painting done in...
This is the first of the Louise Penny series of Chief Inspector Gamache stories; I listened to How the Light Gets In recently and loved it. This one confirms that I am a fan and will listen to the whole series eventually. Though Armand Gamache is based in Montreal, the events occur in the village of Three Pines (these little towns can be so murderous!). We get to know those wonderful...
What an odd book this is. I can't write about it without making the big revelation, so be forewarned. The story is told by the retired Frances, looking back on her life. SPOILER ALERT! The book is set in Galesburg, Illinois, where Frances went to Knox College and fell in love with her Shakespeare professor whom she eventually married. She taught Latin at the high school while he continued to...
This is my third Jessica Anderson book; Tirra Lirra by the River and The Impersonators are the other two and I loved them both. She is successful in all three books at putting you in the location and sometimes awakens your sense of smell as well as prompting images of a setting. This one takes place over three days as the 19-year-old Cecily is continuing to process...
When we meet Fiona, a 59-year-old woman, she is in her nearly perfect flat preparing for the coming day on the bench, where she will deliver her decision about custody of a child. It's a complicated case as the father is in an ultra orthodox Jewish sect from which the mother has distanced herself. Fiona must decide whether the child will be with the mother and attend school and prepare for...
As I mentioned in the post about The Rebel Angels, the first book in Robertson Davies' Cornish Triology, I had read What's Bred in the Bone years ago and had remembered only a vaguely positive view of it. Well, it is a big chunk of a book, big in that it is stuffed with great writing, lots of riveting characters, surprising turns of events, and one stunner of a coincidence. It...