Remember its flight, for the bird is mortal. -Forugh Farrokhzhad I was looking forward to learning about a time and culture, far away from my own, but I never thought I’d be so thoroughly seduced by Jasmin Darznik’s debut novel, Song of a Captive Bird. It is a fictionalized account of Forugh Farrokhzhad, the first woman in Iran to defy her country’s cultural bias and ... Read More...
Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday
Asymmetry is a novel split into three separate and seemingly unrelated parts. I know, sounds like short stories, but there is supposed to be a thread connecting the three. The question is whether I was able to find it or not. The first section is Folly, wherein 27-year-old Alice meets Pulitzer Prize winning author, Ezra Blazer, in Central Park. They talk and after ... Read More...
Red Clocks by Leni Zumas
From the very beginning reading Red Clocks is like looking through a very grimy window. Everything is tinged with dirt and difficult to see, much less see clearly. Four women, each speaking in alternating chapters and never revealing their names, only their most defining characteristic: the Biographer, the Mender, the Wife, the Daughter. In chapters not their own, ... Read More...
Mrs. Osmond by John Banville
“You seem to me, Miss Archer, a person possessed of a large potential; do be careful not to underspend your resource.” I read Henry James’s Portrait of Lady a long time ago, but still remember how bad I felt for its heroine, Isabel Archer. She’s a young American who goes to England and comes into a small fortune, is taken in by a worldly older woman who educates ... Read More...
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
Bruno is nine years old and lives with his parents and his annoying sister in Berlin. His father is a very important man in the German army and after his boss, the Fury comes to visit, Bruno and his family have to leave Berlin and move to a new home. Bruno is understandably upset—their home is a marvel of hidden rooms, places to hide and an amazing bannister for sliding ... Read More...
The Heart’s Invisible Furies
Cyril Avery’s birth was not a propitious one. He came into the world onto the floor of a tiny apartment, next to the unconscious body of his mother’s roommate, with the roommate’s lover lying dead on the stairs below. It was Ireland in 1945 and the roommate and the lover were also teens, but they were men and as such had been hunted down by one’s father. From this ... Read More...
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