A spring evening in 1985, nineteen-year-old Frank Mackie is waiting impatiently outside for his girlfriend Rosie Daly, as they plan to elope and move to London, making a new life for themselves away from the hard life of the Dublin working poor. When she doesn’t show, Frank goes looking for her in the abandoned house a few door down, and finds a note that suggests she’s gone off without him. As Frank’s father is a violent drunk, his mother is neurotic and shrewish and his […]
Fatigue is setting in…
Really a 2.5 but rounded up to a 3, The Burning Land is the fifth book in Cornwell’s Saxon Chronicles and, in my case at least if not in Uhtred’s, fatigue is starting to set in. Uhtred and Alfred are now knocking on a bit for medieval standards (even if Uhtred is still younger than me) with Alfred experiencing increasingly ill health and therefore eager for Uhtred to give his oath to his son and heir, Edward. Contrary as ever, Uhtred refuses and, following the […]
Historical Fluffiness from the Forties
Lisa See, the author of [i]Snow Flower and the Secret Fan[/i], which was a really good book, has delivered a less interesting and slightly faded remix of the same themes Snow Flower had – namely, friendship and Chinese culture. The characters are wooden: good-girl Grace, scandalous Ruby, cantankerous Helen. The story limps along like a wounded homing pigeon, following the “glamour” of the Forties while skipping any of the realities of the second World War. (It does make an appearance, as do the Japanese internment […]
Listen to the Heavens
Rules of Civility takes place in post-Depression, pre-WWI Manhattan, among New York’s elite, those who wish to be New York’s elite and the clubs, parties and restaurants they frequented. The majority of the novel takes place in 1938 and is told from the point of view of Katey (born Katya) Kontent, described by her friend, Eve, as “the hottest bookworm you’ll ever meet.” Katey is the well-read, orphaned daughter of Russian emigrants, Eve (born Evelyn) is the naturally blonde, (naturally?) ambitious transplant from Indiana, and Tinker […]
The Doomsday Book
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis This genre-bending story is a medical thriller, near-future time travel, and historical fiction novel all in one. Despite the subject matter, it’s a rather cozy novel; the kind you read while sipping tea on a rainy afternoon. While reading, I kept thinking that it had no right to be as good as it was because the overall story is rather thin: girl travels in time, professor tries to get her home. Well, maybe it’s a bit more complicated than that. […]
I Wanted More Stuff to Blow Up in the Lab
I am so ambivalent about this book that it’s taken me several minutes to compose this first sentence. I want to read some satisfying fiction, and this was not it. We start out in 1941 with our protagonist Juliet blowing stuff up in the science lab at school. I am on board with this. I’m thinking this is going to be a book about a woman doing science during the war having to deal with everything this entails. This is not what the book is about. It’s […]
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