Rachbxl's reading 2013

Books read this year:

The Word Tree by Teolinda Gersao (Portugal, translation)
Some Tame Gazelle by Barbara Pym (UK)
Stepcoupling by Susan Wisdom and Jennifer Green (non-fiction)
The Snowman by Jo Nesbo (Norway, translation)
Bluebeard by Angela Carter (UK)
Night Dancer by Chika Unigwe (Nigeria)
Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang (China, translation)
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (USA)
The Newlyweds by Nell Freudenberger (USA)
Granta 112
The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka (USA)
That Night by Alice McDermott (USA)
Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones (Australia)
Brooklyn by Coim Toibin (Ireland)
The House of Sleep by Jonathan Coe (UK)
The Winter Vault by Anne Michaels (UK)
The Garden of the Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng (Malaysia)
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (Dominican Republic)
The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides (USA)
The Potter's House by Rosie Thomas (USA)
The Leopard by Jo Nesbo (Norway, translation)
Short and Sweet by Dan Lepard (non-fiction)
Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman (USA)
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (USA)
Dear Life by Alice Munro (USA)
Ina May's Guide to Childbirth by Ina May Gaskin (USA, non-fiction)
Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh (UK)
Birth Skills by Juju Sundin (Australia, non-fiction)
Beneath the Lion's Gaze by Maaza Mengiste (Ethiopia)

Books mentioned on other threads that I want to read:

Tana French (Ridgeway Girl)
Through the Language Glass by Guy Deutscher (Ridgeway Girl)
New Finnish Grammar by Diego Marani (WS)
The Walls of Delhi (kidzdoc)
Moj wiek by Aleksander Wat (Rebecca)
The Polish Boxer (avaland)
Val McDermid (avaland)
Bonnie Jo Campbell (avaland)
Stars of the Long Night (avaland)
Down the Rabbit Hole by Villalobos (avaland)
Always Coca-Cola (avaland)
Anne Holt (avaland)
The Quiet Girl (avaland)
Eating Bitterness (sassylassy)
Just Send Me Word (sassylassy)
The Blue sky (Linda92007)
The age of miracles (torntoc)
The garden of evening mists (torontoc)
the song of everlasting sorrow (Steven03tx)
Gold boy, emerald girl (Cariola)
A thousand years of good prayers (henkmet)
Shadow country (Dmsteyn)
The day of the owl (deebee, Italian)
Marie NDiaye (kidzdoc)
Tash Aw (kidzdoc)
Laurence Cosse (labfs)

Films, TV, etc recommended on other threads:
Three Sisters
the story of the weeping camel
The cave of the yellow dog
Beasts of the southern wild

A very belated Happy New Year to all my LT friends! So much for my resolution to be more active on LT this year... I'm trying not to be daunted by the length of all the threads I already have to catch up on.

I started the year with a decision to finish off some of the far-too-many partially read books that are lying around the place (including on my Kindle). Often there was no good reason not to finish them, so I'm going to try to clear some of the backlog. I've already listed the first 4 books I've read this year in post 1; I probably won't have time to write my thoughts on them now as a friend's about to call me for a long catch-up, but I'll be back (famous last words...)

Happy New Year, Rachel. So glad to see you here!

You were missed. Welcome.

Thanks, Lois and Dan!

The Word Tree by Teolinda Gersao
Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa

Mozambique, the city of Lourenco Marques (modern-day Maputo), in the early 1960s, towards the end of colonial rule. Teenaged Gita, the Mozambique-born child of white Portuguese parents, loves her country of birth and identifies herself with it rather than with the Portugal she has never seen. Her father, Laureano, shares her love of Mozambique, whilst her uptight mother Amelia hates it. The first part of the novel, narrated by Gita, includes many beautifully-observed contrasts between Mozambique (freedom, light, warmth, joy, vast expanses - as personified by Gita and her father, and the local maid and her daughter Orquidea, an unofficial sister to Gita) and Salazar's Portugal (prim, disapproving, narrow, a suffocating joylessness, as personified by Amelia).

In the second part of the novel we get to see things through Amelia's eyes, though, and that's when she becomes interesting. Desperate to escape life in her stifling Portuguese village, she answered Laureano's newspaper ad and went to Mozambique to marry him without having met him. She expected entry into the upper echelons of colonial society and has never forgiven Laureano for not having been able to give her that. Instead of enjoying a life of tea-parties and dances, she struggles on the sidelines as a seamstress, making dresses for the women living 'her' life.

I loved the spontaneous Gita and her deadpan condemnations of her mother, I enjoyed discovering Amelia's own story, but what I most appreciated about this novel was its amazing evocation of a particular time and place. I'm convinced that were I to be transported to the Lourenco Marques of the 1960's, I'd not only know what it looks like; I'd also know how the earth feels underfoot, and I'd even know how it smells.

Thanks to the people at Dedalus Books who originally sent me this for review in Belletrista. I highly recommend a look at their catalogue - this wasn't the only thing that caught my eye.

Hello - good to see you!

Hello Char. Good to be here too - I'm going to try to make it a bit more of a regular thing than it was last year.

Catching up with reviews:

Some Tame Gazelle by Barbara Pym

Started this absolutely ages ago and was determined to finish it this time. It just cried out to be read in a gentle kind of way in front of a log fire, so that's what I did over the holidays. It should have been a quick read but somehow I never felt sufficiently enthusiastic to get stuck into it so it took a ridiculously long time. That said, though, I do like Pym's wit and her sharp observation of character, and some of the conversations between spinster sisters Harriet and Belinda Beale are just deliciously wicked in a wonderfully genteel kind of way.

I'll certainly read more Pym, but probably not for a while.

Stepcoupling: Creating and Sustaining a Strong Marriage in Today's Blended Family by Susan Wisdom and Jennifer Green
Non-fiction

Recommended to me in my capacity as (I hope not too wicked) stepmother. Good to see that I'm not alone, and recommended reading for anyone in a stepfamily.

The Snowman by Jo Nesbo
Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett

This was where my plans to finish unfinished books fell down. So far I'd managed to dodge the Nesbo bullets, despite being partial to a good bit of Scandiwegian crime fiction. But I was struggling to get over a nasty flu bug and in need of something that would distract me without too much effort on my part, and when I saw this on the swap shelf at work I couldn't resist. It hit the spot and I devoured the almost 600 pages in a couple of days.

Harry Hole is yet another of those rumpled detectives, rubbish at relationships, a bit of an odd-ball loner...but ultimately a likeable character - and better than anyone else at solving murder mysteries. I often read this kind of thing when I don't know what else to read, but what sets this apart is that it really scared me! The snow outside didn't help - I scarcely dared look outside in case I saw a snowman. One of those rare instances where you get so caught up in a book you think it's real.

I have already been to the second hand bookshop near work to see if they have any more Jo Nesbo but they didn't. And I'm not, not, NOT buying any new for now!

Night Dancer by Chika Unigwe

Aargh, what an infuriating book! If I hadn't been so impressed with Unigwe's previous book, the fabulous On Black Sisters' Street, I wouldn't have been looking forward quite so much to Night Dancer coming out, and I wouldn't be so disappointed. What's really frustrating, though, is that there are glimpses here of the brilliance Unigwe shows in On Black Sisters' Street...but they're well hidden.

Mma, a young graduate, is left all alone in the world (or so she thinks) when her mother, Ezi, dies. Ezi was never a mother like every other mother, nor a woman like every other Nigerian woman, and Mma despised her for it. Ezi leaves Mma a written account of her life, amounting to an explanation of why she was different; Mma initially refuses to read it but is eventually won over, and what she reads not only leads her to seek out her maternal grandfather (who in turn tells her how to find her father), but also changes the way she sees her mother. Ezi is no longer an embarrassing misfit; Mma sees her for the strong woman she really was, one who refused to conform and suffered for it.

The problem is that the first of the three parts of the novel consists mainly of Ezi's letters, and I found them excruciatingly badly written. It felt like I was reading really bad wannabe chick lit (a couple of years ago I gave up on something by Sefi Atta because it was written in just this style, stilted and self-conscious - is this some hallmark of lesser Nigerian fiction?). I wondered where Unigwe's fresh, lively voice had gone...only to find that it was very much present in the second and third sections, which I really enjoyed. I got so bogged down in the first part though that if I didn't think so much of Unigwe I'd have given up.

Thanks to Lois for sending me this (didn't you say you found the first part very slow?)

This is another off my pile of unfinished reads - it feels great to be getting through them!

I liked your review of The Word Tree and will have to look for a copy.

Those Harry Hole books are dependable fun.

Great review of The Word Tree! Regarding the Uniqwe: yes, a bit slow and I was irritated by the daughter's resentment towards the mother because there was nothing in the book that justified it, IMO. Definitely not as good as the first, but I thought it a worthy read if one is interested in broadening their scope of Nigerian fiction.

>11 RidgewayGirl: RG, hope you enjoy it.

>12 avaland: Lois, yes, I didn't mention that here but that bugged me too - there didn't seem to be much reason for Mma's attitude to her mother and in consequence she (Mma) came across as more spoilt and capricious than I think she was meant to. I think my comments here were a bit harsh as I did enjoy the book in the end - I do think it's seriously let down by that first section though.

Am now off to try to catch up with everyone's threads before it's too late (what better to do on a rainy Sunday morning?)

Great reviews, Rachel! I am looking forward to following your reading this year.

Welcome back, Rachel! I enjoyed your reviews, but none of those books are calling out to me. However, I'm sure that you'll read something in the next week or two that I'll have to add to my wish list. :-)

Great to see you back! The Word Tree seems interesting, especially that I know a few Portuguese (including a sister-in-law) who were born and grew up in Mozambique but whose families returned to Portugal during the war (they were called "retornados"). I can imagine the contrasts the characters felt between their new home and the grim country they left. Which might as well describe the parallels happening now with the wave of Portuguese out-migration to former colonies, to escape the economic crisis. A new generation of "retornados" in reverse. I will look for the book -- thanks, Rachel.

Thanks for your comments, Linda, Darryl (I'll do my best to read something that will tempt you as soon as I can) and deebee. deebee, I think you'd probably like The Word Tree anyway, but all the more so with your background.

Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang
Translated from the Chinese by Karen S. Kingsbury and Eileen Chang

Another one I'd had on the go for ages and have made a determined effort to finish. Eileen Chang had been on my radar for a while (thanks LT!) when I came across the final novella in this collection (Red Rose, White Rose) in an anthology. I was immediately bowled over by Chang's sparse, unflinching style. She says so much in so few words. If I didn't get through this collection of short stories and novellas in one (or even two or three) go, it certainly wasn't because I'd changed my mind about Chang; I just find that a little goes a long way.

I don't know enough about China and Chinese literature, culture and traditions to know if what I'm about to say is at all reasonable, but my feeling is that what makes Chang such a keen observer and sharp commentator is that she inhabited two worlds, even before she left China for the USA in 1955 at the age of 35. Her father was descended from the Qing dynasty, but unlike his ancestors, great statesmen and diplomats, he was an opium-smoking, concubine-keeping short-tempered man who beat his family (including Chang) regularly. So 'old China' on the one hand, as embodied by her father, and on the other, her mother, 'daring and independent in the New Woman mode', according to the translator's excellent introduction. I think having a foot in two camps like this means that Chang can switch between them at will, being a passionate, involved insider or a detached external observer at will.

(The facts here come from the translator's introduction, which has made me want to read more about Eileen Chang and her world, whilst the conjecture is all mine).

I forgot to add comments about yet another of the books I had left unfinished from last year:

Bluebeard by Angela Carter

Like Eileen Chang, Angela Carter had been on my radar for a while when I came across one of her stories in an anthology, the wonderfully-named Stories to Get You Through the Night (bought for me by a friend with a sense of humour when I had an awful spell of insomnia 2 years ago). This Penguin Mini Modern Classic was the perfect second introduction to someone I'll definitely be reading more of.

Carter takes seven classic fairy tales and re-tells them in a very simple but subversive way, rounding each one off with a tart tongue-in-cheek moral, sometimes followed by 'Another Moral', like this one from Puss in Boots:

If a miller's son can so quickly win the heart of a princess, that is because clothes, bearing and youth speedily inspire affection; and the means to achieve them are not always entirely commendable.

>17 rachbxl: I've heard of Chang (mostly thanks to LT) but haven't read her yet. This sounds interesting. I don't know enough about China or Chinese literature to evaluate your conjecture, but it seems plausible. Maybe Edwin could comment on this...

>18 rachbxl: Angela Carter sounds great. I have the collection of her short stories, Burning Your Boats, on my TBR pile, but I have a lot of things to get through first.

Great review of Love in a Fallen City, Rachel. I am adding it to my wishlist. Chang's background does sound very interesting and she certainly seems to have had a difficult life.

Nice review of Love in a Fallen City, Rachel. I already own it, so I'll move it a bit higher on my TBR list.

Good review of Love in a fallen City

Fascinating about Eileen Chang.

Love, love, love Angela Carter so will be riveted when you are able to read more of her and comment.

Hi Rachel! Have you disappeared?

I knew it had been a while since I was last here, but I hadn't realised it was quite THIS long! RL is very busy (in a good way), and just when I've really wanted to be caught up in books I don't have to try too hard to enjoy, I've had a bit of a run of duds that I haven't finished (that's maybe a bit harsh - just that I've not been in the right mood in some cases). I do have a couple of books to comment on here, and I'm REALLY enjoying what I'm reading at the moment (The Newlyweds by Nell Freudenberger) so I'll be back over the next couple of days...

Good to see you (and Akeela) back here, Rachel!

I'm taking a seat... :)

Right then, here goes...

Much of my (limited) reading time these last few months has been taken up with a second attempt at Wolf Hall. The first time I gave up at about page 100; this time I've got over twice as far, but I don't think I'll be persevering. It's strange - it's a book that I really want to like, set in a period of history I've always found interesting, and I'm completely in awe of Mantel's writing in this book. The characters walk off the page! And yet it just doesn't grab me. I gave it a second chance because I thought I just needed to be in a different mood - but I'm afraid I've had the same reaction this time around. It's taken me a ridiculously long time to read 250 pages, because I'm not at all engaged with it in a subjective way (even though objectively I can note how wonderfully well-written the particular page I've just had to read 3 times is). So I'm going to stop beating myself up about it and move on. With regret, because I wanted to see what so many others see in this book.

Anyway, I gave myself a break earlier in the year with something I'd been meaning to read for ages:

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

I loved this book, not a novel but a linked narrative with the figure of Olive Kitteridge running through it, short stories, really - a take on a community, a period, a set of people, from different viewpoints and at slightly different points in time. And what I most like about the book is Olive herself, surely one of the most human characters I've ever come across. She's not an easy character - some of the people around her find her too self-confident, over-bearing (how does that lovely husband of hers put up with her?); we all know people like that, and it's easy enough to pigeon-hole them. But I really enjoyed the gentle dissection of Olive's character, little details revealed, brief moments of introspection, the clumsy attempts to help others without understanding what they really need, the fragile little human being who turns out to be the core of Olive Kitteridge. Moreover, Strout achieves all this without telling the reader that that's what she's doing.

A couple of recent trips to Ireland (work) and the UK (pleasure) have seen me back on book-buying form, so I've built up a great little stock of things I'm dying to read (not that my TBR pile was lacking, obviously). This one I started immediately and whizzed through:

The Newlyweds by Nell Freudenberger

Bangladeshi Amina dreams of improving herself and of leaving behind her job as an English tutor to the children of richer families (families with a father rather more successful than her own, whose money-making schemes only ever end up making his family's life even more difficult). She meets American George online, and before long is heading to Rochester to be his wife. The first two-thirds of the book cover Amina's preparations for departure and her first couple of years in the USA as she tries to adapt, a very honest examination of expectations, both cultural and personal, and how they can be met, frustrated, challenged - and how they can change. It never occurs to Amina and her parents (she is an only child) that her parents won't follow her to Rochester, and even before she leaves the three of them have the details all sketched out - how long before Amina gets her citizenship and is able to invite them, how much money she'll need to have saved up, and so on. Meanwhile, it never occurs to George that he is getting anything other than a wife; he's certainly not counting on live-in in-laws. Each is completely unable to see the other's viewpoint at the outset, and each gradually has to come round a little (or a lot). Misunderstandings and misconceptions like this abound, and Freudenberger deals with them with humour, and with a lot of sympathy for her characters. Up to this point, this is one of the best books I've read for a while.

The last section has Amina returning to Bangladesh to collect her parents, after a couple of years in the USA. Freudenberger handles this return in a way which I found entirely credible, and touching - Amina is looking forward to being back where she belongs, where she's not an outsider...but suddenly she's treated as a foreigner here too. Without realising it, she's slipped away, and she no longer fits in. Of course her parents are having trouble getting their visas, and that's all gripping enough...so I think it was a shame Freudenberger brought in a family feud involving Amina's father and some cousins at this point. I think there was plenty here without that, and the feud is too much. Also, I'm not familiar with life in Bangladesh, but I'm not sure that acid attacks are all that common so I'm not sure how credible it is. The rest of the novel does so well on everyday stuff - why now bring in something completely different? It's almost as if Freudenberger suddenly got worried at the end that her novel wasn't exciting enough so she threw this in for good measure.

Whilst in Ireland I found a marvellous little independent bookshop in Dublin - Books Upstairs, just near Trinity College. As I had to make 2 trips to Dublin, that gave me the chance to make 2 trips to the bookshop so I got quite a haul. I bought this Pakistan issue of Granta largely because the cover was so beautiful I couldn't leave it there.

Granta 112: Pakistan

Quite simply, I feel that my life is better for having read this. The fiction is stunning (predictably so from Nadeem Aslam and Uzma Aslam Khan, but also from writers new to me, like Jamil Ahmad, author of the beautiful last piece of fiction in the issue), and the non-fiction is staggeringly well-written and compelling, and has filled in several gaps I didn't know I had. Fascinating stuff. The wonderful Kamila Shamsie's piece 'Pop Idols', for example - at first I was disappointed that her contribution was non-fiction, but actually I feel privileged to have read her account of the Pakistani pop stars she grew up listening to; an unexpected window into another culture. And then Declan Walsh (The Guardian's man in Pakistan and Afghanistan) and his piece 'Arithmetic on the Frontier', about his time spent with charming warlords and tribesmen in an area in the south of the Pashtun territories where 'murder and fighting...are constant preoccupations'. Fatima Bhutto's piece 'Mangho Pir' about the Sheedi ethnic group and Mangho Pir, home of their main shrine. And on, and on...

I recently bought another issue of Granta (young British novelists), and if that wows me as much as this one, I'm going to subscribe (I'd read one or two on my Kindle in the past but wasn't blown away in the same way).

Oh - the cover. It makes me smile every time I see it. It was specially commissioned from a man called Islam Gull, who is a painter of buses and trucks from a village near Karachi, in the Pakistani tradition of decorating vehicles. I'm afraid I don't know how to put it in this post though...

Enjoyed your recent reviews. The Newlyweds sounds good. Olive Kitteridge was a book club pick I missed. Also sounds good. Forgive me for hijacking your thread, but is this the picture you're looking for?

Always enjoy your reviews, thanks, Rach. I have to pull Olive Kitteridge off the shelf sometime!

Thanks avidmom - that's it!

Excellent review of The Newlyweds, many interesting themes seem to be covered in the book. It is one for the wishlist.

I share your enthusiasm for the Granta books and often find them in second hand shops or bargain bins, they are a great way to discover new writers.

Had to order the Granta Pakistan issue. Sounds interesting and informative.

>35 baswood: Bas, I'm kicking myself now at a lost opportunity - a couple of years ago a colleague was retiring and moving into a smaller place. He happened to mention one day that he wanted to find a new home for all his back issues of Granta, which he was willing to give away...and I didn't take him up on it!!!

>36 mkboylan: hope you enjoy it as much as I did, Merrikay.

>33 akeela: hello Akeela!

I knew I'd forget at least one of the books I read while not posting, and here it is:

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

A slim little novel about the Japanese mail-order brides who emigrated to the USA to join their husbands-to-be in the early 1900s, full of poignant detail about the lives awaiting them there.

This novel is narrated entirely in the first person plural, which I thought I'd have trouble with but which in the end I found very effective. Another particularity is that there aren't really any characters to speak of, at least not in the conventional sense, and there's certainly no individual character development. I've passed the book on to my mum so I can't quote, but the opening chapter, with women and girls in the boat to America, might say something like, 'Some of us were farm girls, used to hard work. A couple of us were from wealthy families and had always had servants. One of us was a teacher's daughter from the north', and so on. Later on, names are used, but we rarely encounter the same name more than one or twice.

Whilst I couldn't tell you, in the way that you usually an after reading a novel, 'character x did this then that, lived here, thought this, married y and was friends with b', I have come away with an amazingly clear picture of these women's lives. It reminds me of something we once did in art class at school - we had to take two magazine photos and snip them into strips, one horizontally, one vertically, and weave the strips together. Up close you'd see a jumbled mish-mash; step back a little and you'd see both photos clearly. The technique would perhaps be hard to sustain over a longer novel, but for the 120 or so pages here it's perfect.

Nice review of The Buddha in the attic

You are not helping on my "No more books this month" resolve. Oh well... great review :)

Nice reviews. I put a few on my "check out these" list. I am sorry you didn't like Wolf Hall. I loved that one and Bring Up The Bodies.

Interesting review of The Buddha in the Attic - particularly enjoyed your discussion of the way it is structured.

I am a great fan of Granta, but don't always get around to promptly reading all of the issues and tend to let my subscription expire, be renewed months later, expire (where I am now)... well you get the drift.

wow I received the Granta Pakistan issue 4 days after I ordered it! Looks wonderful.

Thanks everyone.

>40 AnnieMod: just returning the favour, AnnieMod ;-)

>41 NanaCC: I know, Nana - I'm so disappointed I couldn't get into Wolf Hall, especially as I've heard several people say Bring up the Bodies is 'even better'. I feel like I'm missing out.

>42 Linda92007: Linda, that would be my fear if I subscribed to Granta - I can just imagine them piling up...

>43 mkboylan: Merrikay - enjoy!

I've got a bit bogged down in a relatively short novel, That Night by Alice McDermott, a name I knew but none of whose work I'd read. It would be daft to abandon it because it's so short I've nearly finished it...but I'm not driven to find out what happens. Am feeling similarly lukewarm about my other book of the moment, Under our Skin: a White Family's Journey through South Africa's Darkest Years by Donald McRae (too much of the white family and not enough South Africa for me).

I have that issue of Granta- I will have to move it up on the TBR pile.

>45 torontoc: Do! I think it's worth it.

That Night by Alice McDermott

One of my haul from my trips to Books Upstairs in Dublin, I bought this purely because I recognised Alice McDermott as a name I know though I don't know why, and thought I'd give something of hers a whirl. I'm not sure I'll be trying any more...

In a very ordinary suburb in smalltown 1960's America, Sheryl and Rick are teenagers in love. When Sheryl gets pregnant, her mother immediately sends her away to an aunt's in another state. She has no chance to say goodbye to Rick, who, thinking she has left him, rallies his mates to drive their cars up on to her lawn, where they get into a fight with the local men (this is 'that night', which takes up a good part of the 175 pages).

I liked the opening scenes very much, the building of tension in the quiet suburban street as the three cars drive slowly round and round, gradually drawing all the neighbours out of their houses to witness the spectacle. However, they are drawn in, each group in their own way - the men, fathers who roll up their sleeves to do the decent thing and protect women they know to be alone (Sheryl's father is dead); the children, like the narrator, watching and only understanding years later; the women, like a Greek chorus, providing choreographed commentary. I really appreciated the staging of it - like a Greek tragedy, in fact.

The rest of the book didn't live up to the opening, though, and left me wondering really what the point was.

Somehow I lost your thread for a (long) while, but I've enjoyed catching up this morning.

I also have that issue of Granta, and like Cyrel I'll move it up my TBR pile as well.

Not doing well on my resolution to post here more frequently, but I have at least been reading!

Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones

Gail Jones has been on my radar for several years thanks to LT, without ever having made it to the top of my mental TBR list. This was another from the bookshop in Dublin, I think.

What to say? I don't really know what to make of this novel; I didn't know what to make of it when was reading it, nor did I know when I finished it, and I still don't now, about a month later. Alice, a young Australian who teaches at a university, has travelled to Paris to work on her book 'The Poetics of Modernity'. Here she meets a much older Japanese gentleman, Mr Sakamoto, a survivor of the Nagasaki bomb, and they develop a friendship based on their curiosity about and reaction to the world around them (and about twentieth-century inventions in particular, in Mr Sakamoto's case).

There's not much of a plot; it's more of a reverie (the title suggests that, after all) than a linear narrative. There are lots of philosophical digressions and lengthy descriptions, some more successful than others. Sometimes Jones's writing is just beautiful; I just read a review in the Guardian which says her writing is beautiful when it's 'stark and Australian', and that's exactly right - when describing Alice's Australian childhood, for example. At other times she seems to get completely carried away ('purple prose', this same reviewer called it); I had trouble in particular with the dialogue, and especially with things Alice is supposed to have said - nobody speaks like that! She might have put it like that in her pompously-entitled book 'The Poetics of Modernity', but I don't believe for a minute she would actually talk like that; it just doesn't ring true.

I'll try more Gail Jones in the future, but I'll approach with caution.

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

I wrote my thoughts on this immediately after finishing it about a month ago, but the computer swallowed them. I know I enjoyed reading it at the time, but it turns out not to have left much of a mark.

There's no future for Eilis (or many others) in her small town in Ireland in the 1950s, and her sister Rose arranges for her to emigrate to New York, under the wing of an Irish priest in Brooklyn, who finds her a job in a department store and a room in a boarding house. The descriptions of Eilis's initial loneliness and homesickness are very convincing, without ever becoming sentimental, and really made me think about the impossible situation so many immigrants have put themselves in over time; immigration isn't an easy option. Eilis slowly starts to spread her wings and take part in life in the thriving Irish community around her, which I enjoyed reading about - the boarding house, the parish church, the Friday night dances at church, the Christmas soup kitchen organised by the church... I was struck by how parochial her life in New York is, how limited; in fact, she's not in New York as such, she's in Brooklyn, and that's as far as her knowledge of New York extends for a long time.

Just as Eilis starts to feel she has a real future in the USA, a tragedy at home calls her back to Ireland. She fully plans to return to the States, but, once home, unexpectedly feels the pull of the familiar...

The House of Sleep by Jonathan Coe

Lent to me by the husband of a friend, a fellow bad sleeper. It's not often a book makes me laugh out loud (I might smile, but not laugh), but this one did, several times.

A group of students share a house in the 1980s and then drift apart. 10 years later they are all drawn back to the house, now a sleep clinic run by the increasingly odd Dr Gregory Dudden (himself one of the original students). A series of almost impossible coincidences has them all converging, only the people who need to meet don't quite coincide, those who shouldn't meet at all crash into each other, and so on.

One of the parts that made me laugh involves Sarah, a narcoleptic who is unable to distinguish her vivid dreams from reality. As a student she meets a new resident in the house, Robert, and chats to him one evening; he tells her his father just called to say the family cat has died, but Sarah's mind replaces this with the version she goes on to dream, in which Robert's sister has just died. Cue an awful conversation along the lines of,

'Have the funeral arrangements been made yet?'
'Oh, we're not going to bother with a funeral; we weren't that attached to her'

with neither side realising what the problem is.

It's a bit of a madcap romp but it's VERY cleverly done and is put together very tightly. As I say, it's funny in parts, but it's also a very sensitive look at being human, what draws us to certain people and then repels us, what drives us on, how and why we succeed and fail.

I enjoyed those reviews! Lovely reviews. So many book.......Thanks for posting!

The Winter Vault by Anne Michaels

I remember thinking that there was something about Fugitive Pieces that I didn't quite get, when everyone else raved about it...and I think the same here again. Yes, The Winter Vault was a pleasant enough read, but it left me wanting something more (or something else?)

Newly married, Avery and Jean go to live in Egypt, where Avery is involved in the painstaking work of relocating the Temple of Abu Simbel at the time of the construction of the Aswan Dam (1960s). The theme of reconstruction figures prominently, Avery having been involved in other projects where settlements have been relocated, and Jean having salvaged plants from her beloved mother's garden, which she nurtured in her small flat until she had the chance to plant them and re-create the garden on her mother-in-law's land. They are very much in love, until personal tragedy drives a wedge between them. Eventually, back in Canada, they separate, and Jean immediately takes up with a Polish artist she bumps into completely by accident, who just happens to have been involved in the reconstruction of Warsaw after WW2. I found this far too much of a coincidence to be credible.

Jean bumbles through her relationship with the Pole (I no longer have the book so can't look his name up), and although he treats her well and she is adopted by his circle, she seems quite indifferent to him and his friends...just as I felt indifferent to the lot of them, including Jean.

I won't deny that there's some really beautiful writing here...but I just didn't really see the point of the story. I couldn't help feeling that Michaels somehow tried to force the plot to fit around what she wanted to say about reconstruction and rebuilding, and for me it didn't work.

>53 mkboylan: Thanks Merrikay!

The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng

What a wonderful surprise. I loved this book, by far the best I've read for a long time.

I avoided Tan Twan Eng's earlier novel The Gift of Rain, and I'd been steering clear of this one too - unfairly, as it turns out, but I'd had my fill of Asian novels with poetic titles like these which turn out to be a disappointment.

The Garden of Evening Mists is a garden in the Cameron Highlands, Malaya, designed by the Japanese Aritomo, once gardener to the Emperor of Japan. Yun Ling arrives here in her quest to create a Japanese garden in memory of her sister, who died in a Japanese concentration camp in WW2. Aritomo refuses to design a garden for her, but offers to take Yun Ling on as his apprentice; in accepting, she has to confront her own, and her country's, past (Yun Ling too was a prisoner-of-war). The peace and beauty of the garden contrast with the brutality of war.

It's been a long time since I read such a beautiful, evocative novel. I was scared to breathe in case I broke the spell.

Reminds me of my resolution... :) On the bright side, I've also been reading and have perhaps had a slightly better run than you.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

This novel is an amazing achievement. Not my thing, but I'm still able to see that it's an incredible achievement. It just fizzes with life (even though it's ultimately about death).

I hadn't rushed to read it because I'd already read Diaz's short story collection Drown before the novel came out, and there again I thought it was excellent, objectively, although not really for me. Still, I felt that there was a bit of a gap in my reading culture as long as Oscar Wao remained unread, and I'm glad to have filled that gap. The pathetic figure of Oscar Wao - a New Jersey ghetto nerd whose dream is to become the Dominican Tolkien, overweight, and as hopelessly romantic as he is hopeless with girls - will live on in my mind for a long time, and the voice of the narrator, Yunior, is so fresh and invigorating that I won't be forgetting him in a hurry either.

> 57 Come on then, Akeela, let's hear about it! I could do with some recommendations...

Great to catch up with your reviews, Rachel! The House of Sleep sounds intriguing.

>56 rachbxl: I was scared to breath in case I broke the spell.

What a beautiful way to put it. That one will go on the WL too. The House of Sleep sounds like fun.

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

Another in my run of perfectly readable but not mind-blowing books.

It's 1982, and Madeleine is finishing her English degree at Brown. Madeleine appears to have everything - the looks, the brain, the happy childhood, the comfortably-off middle-class family, and lots of friends. With her love of writers like Jane Austen and George Eliot, she's also a hopeless old-fashioned romantic.

And just like the heroines of the novels she adores, Madeleine has two suitors. There's patient Mitchell, in love with Madeleine since they met on arrival at Brown but content to be her friend in the hope she'll fall in love too. And then there's Leonard, another fellow student, who has 'UNSUITABLE' written all over him - but Madeleine fails to notice.

Eugenides captures that feeling of youth, poised at the door of the big wide world, really well. All the bright-eyed hopes of the graduating students as they face their future - Madeleine's quest to continue her studies in English literature, Leonard's bright future as a biologist threatened by his depression, and Mitchell's complete lack of clarity and escape to India to put off the decision.

The novel bulges with high-brow literary and critical references, some of which I'm sure passed me by. A lot of them I did get, but only because they refer to things I happen to have covered at university (Cixous, Kristeva, Lacan, and so on - actually I'd have been happier not to be reminded). I found it all a bit pompous - yes, some detail adds to the flavour, makes it more authentic, like the details of Leonard's research into yeast (but this clearly isn't Eugenides's field so the detail is kept to a level that's needed to be convincing). I couldn't help feeling at times that whole parts of the novel were a vehicle for Eugenides to show off his knowledge of twentieth century literary criticism (thereby alienating a lot of readers?)

Another gripe is that the whole novel is centred on 'the marriage plot', ie Madeleine and her two suitors - but, for me, in this particular instance the plot doesn't work. As I've said, Madeleine has everything, and is portrayed as a happy, confident, sensible young woman. Her sticking with Leonard to quite the extent that she does just doesn't make sense, whereas had she been more needy, less self-assured, I'd have found it more plausible.

So, an enjoyable enough read, entertaining, well written...but it definitely won't have a place in my 'best of' list.

Enjoying your reviews rachbxl

I remember thinking that there was something about Fugitive Pieces that I didn't quite get, when everyone else raved about it...

Just jumping in to say "me too!" . . . there were things about that book that I did like, but overall it fell flat for me. A friend gave me a copy of The Winter Vault, but I'm not in a hurry to try Anne Michaels again.

I won't deny that there's some really beautiful writing here...but I just didn't really see the point of the story. I couldn't help feeling that Michaels somehow tried to force the plot to fit around what she wanted to say

Yep, that could fit what I think of Fugitive Pieces. However, I have to say in that book's defense, that the opening scene where the child is hiding from the Nazis in the forest was really well done.

Anyway, good to catch up on your comments on all your reading.

>63 baswood: Thanks Bas!

>64 Nickelini: Joyce, I'm glad to know it's not just me! It's over 10 years since I read Fugitive Pieces and I remember almost nothing about it - except for that scene you mention, which was very powerful.

The Potter's House by Rosie Thomas

Several years ago, very early on in our LT days, Akeela and I both read the wonderful Iris and Ruby by Rosie Thomas, and we loved it. Since then, every now and then I've tried others by Thomas, hoping for the same magic...but I'm always disappointed. Like others I've read, The Potter's House is perfectly readable, good for when you want something quite light but still well-written - but when I pick up a Rosie Thomas that's not what I want; I want something that shows the talent she showed in Iris and Ruby.

English Oivia lives on her tiny Greek island with her local husband and her two sons, an integral part of the local community. It's a peaceful, gentle life, run by the seasons, but Olivia feels she has everything she could want...until Kitty washes up on their doorstep in the aftermath of earthquake. At first Olivia welcomes the presence of another English woman, realising that in her perfect life there is nevertheless a best-friend-shaped hole, and Kitty quickly becomes part of the family, and by extension of the community...at which point Olivia starts to feel threatened (Kitty looks surprisingly like Olivia as well, and the two are sometimes confused). Olivia is thrown into turmoil, as Kitty's presence starts to make her question her perfect life.

There's a twist at the end which I won't give away; I'll just say that it's about the choices we make in life, the doors we close in choosing to open others. I've read reviews saying that this is all very deep and philosophical and really adds to the story, but I didn't think so myself; I'd rather just have had the story, as I'm not sure the twist adds anything (in fact I couldn't help wondering if it wasn't just that the author desperately needed an ending!)

The Leopard by Jo Nesbo
Translated from the Norwegian by Don Barlett

I was getting tired of my run of mediocre books so I thought it was time for a bit of Scandiwegian crime fiction to break the trend and get me ready for something else. What to say? Harry Hole is yet another of those rumpled detectives, barely able to function (alcoholic, disastrous personal life), yet brilliant, the one the police have to wheel (reluctantly) out of enforced retirement when all else fails. Just like The Snowman, The Leopard kept me gripped until the last page, through countless twists and turns and ups and downs.

And I think it did the trick, as I've already moved on to something which, 2 stories in, seems to be in another class to all the not-very-inspiring books I've read recently - a book of short stories by Edith Pearlman. Where has she been all my life?

I love ole Harry!

>68 mkboylan: He's a great character, isn't he? I think he might be my favourite of all these detectives.

Short and Sweet by Dan Lepard

I wouldn't normally list a cookery book here, but then I wouldn't normally read a cookery book from cover to cover. This was a present from my sister, who apologetically said that she'd never heard of Dan Lepard and she presumed (correctly) that I hadn't either, but that when she was researching a book about home baking to give me, she kept finding positive comments about his recipes. (Lepard turns out to be a Guardian cookery columnist, and, I believe, a judge on The Great Australian Bake-off).

There are tons of recipes in this book, from simple white bread through to all sorts of things I'd always assumed were out of reach but which Lepard makes accessible. I always like reading recipes, but what made this readable as a whole book were Lepard's comments and suggestions, which I found fascinating. For example, the second recipe, right after simple white bread (which made possibly the best white bread I've ever made), is a recipe for a white loaf if you've only got 2 hours to spare...secret ingredients: vinegar and mashed potato! I haven't tried it yet, but he explains what each of them does, and the book is full of little tricks like this.

Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman

The ridiculous length of time it's taken me to read this collection of short stories is by no means an indication that I didn't enjoy it! In part, I've not had much reading time recently, but there's also the fact that whilst at first I rushed through these wonderful stories, greedily turning to the next as soon as I'd finished one, after a while I decided to savour them.

The stories here were originally published in reviews, newspapers and magazines between 1977 and 2010, although Pearlman only published her debut collection in 1996, aged 60. I'm a big short story fan anyway, but to my mind these are up there with the best, alongside Alice Munro and a small handful of others. And it's not just the quality that reminds me of Munro; Pearlman has the same way of peering at everyday human scenarios and stripping away the layers to reveal the truth - but, like Munro, she does so gently, showing her characters compassion.

I loved Binocular Vision too, Rachel.

I'm making a rare stop into Club Read and your thread caught my eye. Interesting thoughts on The Winter Vault and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I read the former, my husband read the latter. I'm really preoccupied these days so not terribly book-focused.

Congratulations, btw. I'm very happy for you!

> 66 I just passed my much-loved copy of Iris and Ruby on to someone today! So true! I've also tried a couple of other Rosie Thomas titles and haven't had been pleased either.

More Hearty Congratulations!!! :)