The Communist takeover of Saigon forces Nguyễn An Tinh and her family to leave behind their luxurious life and escape to a refugee camp in Malaysia. From there the family immigrates to Canada and settles in Quebec. Kim Thúy’s novel is called Ru, meaning ‘lullaby’ in Vietnamese, which aptly describes the book’s style of storytelling and reminiscence. It is a slim volume with ... Read More...
Beside the Sea
Two young boys journey with their mother to see the ocean for the first time and have an adventure. Unfortunately, nothing is as planned and the trip is not what it seems. For their mother, finding herself out of sync with the world is not unusual, even regarding something as straightforward as sleep. …we’d suddenly find it was the next morning, like other people do, the ones ... Read More...
In Sunlight and In Shadow
And if you were a spirit, and time did not bind you, and patience and love were all you knew, then there you would wait for someone to return, and the story to unfold. Mark Helprin’s Winter's Tale was a magical enthralling ode to New York City and the first and only book I wanted to read after 9/11, despite having originally read it when I lived in NYC . It’s a timeless tale ... Read More...
The Forgiven
The suburbs of Tangiers were ruined, but the gardens were still there. And so were the crippled lemon trees and olives, the dogged disillusion and empty factories, the smell of seething young men. A sybaritic weekend in the Saharan desert of Morocco, at a fantastically renovated fortress compound. Richard and Dally have invited friends from around the globe and for Londoners, ... Read More...
Sometimes a Great Notion
When I learned that Ken Kesey grew up in Oregon I thought I was long overdue to read one of his books. I had seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and didn’t think I needed to revisit that subject so I opted for his second novel, Sometimes a Great Notion. The story is set in Oregon logging country in the early 1960s. It catches the Stamper family (aptly named) at the height of ... Read More...
Misfit: A Novel
The 50th anniversary of Marilyn’s death was this month and it’s been heralded by an uptick in new books about her life. I reviewed Lois Banner’s biography Marilyn last week but was interested to see what a fiction author would do, especially as so much of Marilyn’s life reads like fiction anyway. How would one choose which way to go from the trove of material available? In ... Read More...
