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Dust Child

March 14, 2023

dust child

The Vietnam War has been written about from many points of view in fiction, but for the most part my reading has focused on the years of the war, rife as they are with the atrocities perpetuated on the Vietnamese, both by their own people (ARVN soldiers in the South, Viet Cong in the North) and then the Americans. Dust Child by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai takes a longer view by ... Read More...

4 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, historical fiction, Vietnam, Vietnam War

The Queen of Dirt Island

March 8, 2023

queen

The week Saoirse Aylward is born her father is killed in an accident, leaving her mother, Eileen alone to raise her. Their lives in a small village in western Ireland are at the heart of Donal Ryan’s boisterous, tender novel The Queen of Dirt Island. Although the novel stays within the village’s borders it’s an expansive story encompassing four generations of Irish women with ... Read More...

8 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, cultural, humor, Ireland, literary

Maame by Jessica George

January 30, 2023

maame

Maame is an African word for “woman” and the title of Jessica George’s debut novel, but for young Maddie it feels like a yoke on her shoulders. She lives at home as the part-time caretaker for her father. Her mother manages a hostel she inherited in Ghana and only returns to England intermittently. Her older brother James has his own apartment and says he’ll help, but never ... Read More...

2 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: contemporary life, debut, London, new adult

The Book of Everlasting Things

January 27, 2023

everlasting

The Book of Everlasting Things is a multigenerational debut spanning the globe from India to Europe. Initially set in Lahore, India in the 1930s and 40s the novel encompasses 70 years in the lives of one Hindu boy and one Muslim girl. Two children, who despite different backgrounds, grow into love only to have it, and their lives, shattered when Great Britain partitions part of ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: cultural, debut, historical fiction, India, religion, world war II

Ghost Season by Fatin Abbas

January 18, 2023

ghost season

Ghost Season by Fatin Abbas opens with a charred corpse being found near a humanitarian aid compound that sits in a remote village on the border between north and South Sudan. The body’s discovery is the grim reminder that violent clashes between the government and rebels are increasing. This is the first in a series of events that upsets the fragile balance between the ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: cultural, debut, literary, Middle East

Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor

January 13, 2023

vice

Anyone else remember the good old days of Sidney Sheldon, Penny Vincenzi, Nelson DeMille, any of those authors who wrote massive novels that were so stuffed with plot you couldn’t stop reading? Maybe it’s just my reading taste, but most of the longer novels I read now are literary fiction or historical. It was fun then to fall face first into Age of Vice, a sweeping novel of ... Read More...

4 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: cultural, India, social issues

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