And now I do what I did in my dream: I reach out my hand to David, close my eyes, and remember. – from The Last Brother, page 8 – I was expecting that, at my great age, I would take an indulgent view of my life, knowing that regrets serve no purpose, that you [...]
Posts under ‘Prize Winning Books’
Best Books of 2010
I will remember 2010 as a great year in reading – 75% of the books I read were rated a 4 star or higher…a reflection of the amazing books which found their way into my hands in 2010. As I sat down to make up my Top Ten reads of 2010 list (books not necessarily [...]
Tinkers – Book Review
He tinkered. Tin pots, wrought iron. Solder melted and cupped in a clay dam. Quicksilver patchwork. Occasionally, a pot hammered back flat, the tinkle of tin sibilant, tiny beneath the lid of the boreal forest. Tinkerbird, coppersmith, but mostly a brush and mop drummer. – from Tinkers, page 12 – George Washington Crosby is eight [...]
Let the Great World Spin – Book Review
Tacked inside his cabin door was a sign: NOBODY FALLS HALFWAY. He believed in walking beautifully, elegantly. It had to work as a kind of faith that he would get to the other side. He had fallen only once while training – once exactly, so he felt it couldn’t happen again, it was beyond possibility. [...]
The Lizard Cage – Book Review
Men have often reduced his voice to gasps and weeping. They have crushed the power to speak from his body, from many bodies. But words written down outlive the vulnerability of the flesh. His songs still fly through the air like swallows. Recorded words can be passed along. In one form or another they will [...]
Brooklyn – Book Review
Later, during the week, as she was making her way from Bartocci’s to Brooklyn College, she forgot what she was looking forward to; sometimes she actually believed that she was looking forward to thinking about home, letting images of home roam freely in her mind, but it came to her now with a jolt that, [...]
The Glass Room – Book Review
For the moment it was without form or substance, yet it existed, diffuse, diverse, in their minds and in the mind of Ranier von Abt. It existed in the manner that ideas and ideals, shifting and insubstantial, may exist. Space, light, glass; some spare furniture; windows looking out on a garden; a sweep of shining [...]
The Little Stranger – Book Review
The subliminal mind has many dark, unhappy corners, after all. Imagine something loosening itself from one of those corners. Let’s call it a – a germ. And let’s say conditions prove right for that germ to develop – to grow, like a child in the womb. What would this little stranger grow into? A sort [...]
2010 Long List for Orange Prize for Fiction Announced
Today the Orange Prize Long List was announced and the nominees are: The Very Thought of You, by Rosie Alison The Rehearsal, by Eleanor Catton Savage Lands, by Clare Clark Hearts and Minds by Amanda Craig The Way Things Look to Me, by Roopa Farooki The Twisted Heart, by Rebecca Gowers This is How, by [...]
The Children’s Book – Book Review
The children mingled with the adults, and spoke and were spoken to. Children in these families, at the end of the nineteenth century, were different from children before or after. They were neither dolls nor miniature adults. They were not hidden away in nurseries, but present at family meals, where their developing characters were taken [...]
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