This engaging book is a series of short letters Nina Stibbe sent to her sister when Nina was a nanny in London for Mary-Kay Wilmers, a founder and the current editor of the London Review of Books. Wilmers is divorced from Steve Frears (filmmaker: My Beautiful Laundrette and Philomena) and Nina was hired to help care for their two sons, Sam and Will. In the early 1980s Nina moved to London from...
The Children Act by Ian McEwan. Jon Meacham's Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power. Audiobook. The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearns Goodwin. 36 hour audiobook. Nora Webster by Colm Toibin. Lila by Marilynne Robinson James Salter's Light Years. "Worshipped" by John Self. Public library. Life Drawing by Robin Black. Tony's commentary priceless. The Betrayers by David...
This is another great Tony recommendation. It has been a perfect audiobook in that the pace is slow and is repetitive enough so you won't miss any key points and interesting enough to keep you happy to take a walk so you can listen to it. It is a nicely complex police procedural set in the province of Québec. References are made to events that precede it in the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache...
It was Tony‘s recommendation that encouraged me to read Amélie Nothomb, a Belgian writer who writes in French. I was impressed by Fear and Trembling, one of her autobiographical novellas and decided to try another of her novellas. This one edged out of my comfort zone and then lurched farther from it, but I made it through. A retirement age couple who by the way had been married since they...
It was a mention of him by Tony that prompted me to read Robertson Davies, but I began with The Rebel Angels because it is the first in the Cornish Trilogy and What's Bred in the Bone is next and I did read that a million years ago and have no memory of it other than a vaguely positive feeling. So now I'll read the trilogy and set down my thoughts about it. Though I was...
Having enjoyed the over-the-top humor of his Absurdistan and especially Super Sad True Love Story, I was drawn to Gary Shteyngart’s memoir. I remember hearing in an interview for the book that after many years of self-destructive behavior, his work with an analyst changed his life. Well, you have to love a redemption story. And it is that, but redemption is a long slog away from page 1...
This winner of the 2014 Miles Franklin Award is mesmerizing and leaves unclear what is real and what is imagined. The main character is Jake, a woman who raises sheep on an island off the coast of England. She grew up in Australia, in a truly grim and ugly environment. The story of her current life on the island is told along with the revelations of her miserable past in alternating chapters...
Alice McDermott tells the story of a place and a time through her characters. I found this true of the previous book of hers that I read, After This, as well as this one. The lifetime of the main character, Marie, begins in perhaps the mid-1920s. Marie's Irish family lives in Brooklyn and McDermott paints a clear and focused picture of those years of Marie's childhood. Every...
Guest Post Today! My brother Steve Clifford agreed to write about Auto Biography, Charlottesville author Earl Swift's new book. There are few people who care more about cars than Steve. On a visit to the cemetery where our parents are buried, as we strolled by the graves, he recounted the specific cars purchased and sold by people in the 1950s. This is a man who wrote to Cadillac...
When I saw Ron Charles' enthusiastic review in The Washington Post, I was moved to read this book. He warns potential readers to beware of "diligent summaries that might suffocate its pleasures" and I agree that the pleasures of the book are its central figure Tooly with a cast of unlikely characters and the complex way we learn of their true selves and connections. The story...