I decided to read the Australia writer Tim Winton’s The Turning after seeing this enthusiastic review of the film in The Guardian. It’s hard enough to make a collection of short stories into a cohesive story; according to The Guardian, the film does that successfully with 17 different directors. Winton took a different tack from his usual straight forward masterful storytelling here;...
This rich and complex novel has a deceptively simple mechanism to unfold the plot and explore ideas. A writer named Ruth lives with her husband Oliver on an island on the west coast of Canada. She finds a diary, letters, and a watch that had washed ashore, apparently from Japan. The diary was written by a 16-year-old girl named Nao who had returned to Japan with her parents after growing up in...
The Maid’s Version, reviewed by Tony’s Book World, is described by the author as “country noir.” It was awfully dark and the tone did remind me of Double Indemnity or The Postman Always Rings Twice. Woodrell also wrote Winter’s Bone, which I understand has been made into a good film. The maid is Alma whom we hear about from her grandson who is sent to stay with her...
Anthony Marra, a 28-year-old man from Washington, D.C. has written a complex and emotionally satisfying novel with characters who are wildly different from any in his own life. Set in Chechnya, the story occurs in 2004, but ranges back to the first Chechen war to flesh out the characters, and occasionally tells what happens to characters many years in the future. I found it helpful to read the...
I hesitated to take on this book after reading some reviews, thinking it would be out of my comfort zone. Fortunately I read Tony”s review and knew I would love it. And I did. The unusual nature of the narrative is the “Groundhog Day” aspect of the storytelling. The novel begins with a birth in 1910 in rural England that goes wrong as there is a snowstorm and the doctor...
The title 419 is the number of the statute in the Nigerian legal code that refers to obtaining money through fraud. We've all seen email from those who are undeterred by that statute. The book opens on the aftermath of the suicide of a retired school teacher in Calgary facing the loss of all his money and the house where he and his wife lived. His wife and two grown children learn what...
Having loved Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge, I was excited to pick up her new book. The New England setting is once again an integral part of the story, this time in a small town in Maine. The narrator of the prologue gives us a brief description of the Burgess family history and tells the impetus for that narrator to write the story of the Burgess brothers. There are three...
Loving Sabotage by Amelie Nothombe. Novella recommended by Tony's Book World, Belgian writer. At UVa library in French. 419 by Will Ferguson. Giller prize winner. Mitsou by Collette. At UVa library. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra. Nat'l Book Award longlist, Tony's review, Ron Charles' favorite of the year. On Agate Hill by Lee Smith Questions of Travel by...
This was recommended by Corinne; I learned later the author teaches at UVa and the book was reviewed by the NYT. He has written books that explore life on an estate called Mason’s Retreat in eastern Maryland that is older than the country. The distant past is never far away and “the Emigrant” is mentioned more than once. The key events of this story begin with the horror of the...
As part of preparation for painting a room, along with spackling, sanding, choosing paint, and caulking, I looked around for an audiobook to listen to. A quote from Ron Charles, fiction critic at The Washington Post, caught my attention: “My daughter just graduated from college, but her education won’t be complete till she’s studied Waldman’s brilliant taxonomy of homo erectus brooklynitis...