There are times when what is needed is a story so utterly foreign that it plucks us out of our own world and drops us into one for which our background leaves us completely unprepared. I found this with Lisa O’Donnell’s debut novel The Death of Bees: A Novel. Set in Glasgow, it encompasses the world of Marnie and Nelly, two teens left on their own when their parents die. Well, ... Read More...
The Valley of Amazement
Amy Tan is another author returning this year after a multi-year absence. In The Valley of Amazement she weaves a tapestry of the lives of three generations of women, one silken thread at a time. The novel is a portrait of life in a courtesan house in Shanghai at the turn of the century. Violet’s mother, Lucia, is the proprietor. As she is growing-up Violet believes that ... Read More...
We Are Water: A Novel
How a work can be solid and delicate, earthy and of air is a mystery but describes Wally Lamb’s novel, We Are Water. Ostensibly it is the story of Annie Oh—wife, mother, artist and keeper of secrets, secrets that grow and beget other secrets, changing her life and the lives around her. When she is only five, she watches as her mother is swept away by a flood, along with her ... Read More...
Beautiful Ruins
In a remote village on the coast of Italy the young owner of The Hotel Adequate View receives only the second American guest in the hotel’s history. She’s surrounded by mystery but appears to have come from Rome where the filming of Cleopatra is still ongoing. Little does Pasquale Tursi know it, but his life is about to be changed forever. Beautiful Ruins is an expansive story ... Read More...
The Orchardist
It’s already been said but bears repeating: Amanda Coplin’s The Orchardist is a stunning debut; the story of a plot of land and the people who shape it while it shapes them. When William Talmadge is nine he and his sister, Elsbeth settle into a remote, rural area of north-central Washington state with their mother. She has no explanation in choosing this location but, even at ... Read More...
The Colour of Milk
and if i could stop time that is what i would do and i would stay in that minute for all my life and for ever. but a minute can not last for ever. Mary is an illiterate farmer’s daughter. The youngest child in her family, she is also deemed the least valuable because she was born with a deformed leg and cannot move as quickly as her sisters. What she lacks in physical ... Read More...
