Difference between revisions of "Newest General Fiction Reviews"
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| + | |author=Yann Martel | ||
| + | |title=The High Mountains of Portugal | ||
| + | |rating=4 | ||
| + | |genre=General Fiction | ||
| + | |summary=Tomas is being thrust into the twentieth Century, and he doesn't like it. He has given himself the job of seeking something out in the High Mountains of Portugal, based on an ancient religious diary he found working in an archive, and to do so he needs the use of his uncle's brand new car to get him there and back in time. His jaw drops when he learns he will have to do the driving himself, for he cannot make head nor tail of what anything on the infernal machine does and why. It is of course a certain kind of progress, a looking forward, which has become quite anathema to him – for ever since he lost his beloved wife, beloved child and father, all in the space of a week, he has walked everywhere backwards – shielding himself from what really is ahead with a padded behind, and never letting sight of what he has lost. | ||
| + | |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782114696</amazonuk> | ||
| + | }} | ||
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|author=Antonio Moresco and Richard Dixon (translator) | |author=Antonio Moresco and Richard Dixon (translator) | ||
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|summary=Seeing as this book is clearly a talented author hitting the ground running, I will dispense with any major preamble. We start with a tale of a daughter affected by the emotions of her parents as they separate – and the influence of a certain school-teacher – from the mother's point of view. An ancient input shows how alien, and the modern day domesticity how regular, the isolation of a woman can feel, as events are peppered by minor acts of destruction. But men can be alienated too – especially one, a reluctant guest at a party for children hosted by someone he once had an affair with – he feels the new form of this influence in the light of another one he has had to try and abandon. 'All About Alice' – that's what the title character wants to say but has nobody to speak it to, but is it her – mid-40s and single, living with her father – that is most removed from her dreams or her old friend and now child factory, Marian? And we complete a lap of the calendar with the wintry tale of a man unable to tell his work superiors of the problems he faces at home – a new home, recently built like so many one sees while driving round Ireland. | |summary=Seeing as this book is clearly a talented author hitting the ground running, I will dispense with any major preamble. We start with a tale of a daughter affected by the emotions of her parents as they separate – and the influence of a certain school-teacher – from the mother's point of view. An ancient input shows how alien, and the modern day domesticity how regular, the isolation of a woman can feel, as events are peppered by minor acts of destruction. But men can be alienated too – especially one, a reluctant guest at a party for children hosted by someone he once had an affair with – he feels the new form of this influence in the light of another one he has had to try and abandon. 'All About Alice' – that's what the title character wants to say but has nobody to speak it to, but is it her – mid-40s and single, living with her father – that is most removed from her dreams or her old friend and now child factory, Marian? And we complete a lap of the calendar with the wintry tale of a man unable to tell his work superiors of the problems he faces at home – a new home, recently built like so many one sees while driving round Ireland. | ||
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473613701</amazonuk> | |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473613701</amazonuk> | ||
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Revision as of 15:21, 16 March 2016
The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel
Tomas is being thrust into the twentieth Century, and he doesn't like it. He has given himself the job of seeking something out in the High Mountains of Portugal, based on an ancient religious diary he found working in an archive, and to do so he needs the use of his uncle's brand new car to get him there and back in time. His jaw drops when he learns he will have to do the driving himself, for he cannot make head nor tail of what anything on the infernal machine does and why. It is of course a certain kind of progress, a looking forward, which has become quite anathema to him – for ever since he lost his beloved wife, beloved child and father, all in the space of a week, he has walked everywhere backwards – shielding himself from what really is ahead with a padded behind, and never letting sight of what he has lost. Full review...
Distant Light by Antonio Moresco and Richard Dixon (translator)
Our unnamed narrator might as well be the only person alive. He knows he's not – he still goes down to the nearest inhabited village to buy things to eat and other necessities, and he sees planes spreading their contrails over the remote area he lives in – but he might as well be. A lot of his thoughts are about life, however, for he has little to do except notice the nature around him, from the smell of lilies burgeoning with nobody else to see them in this deserted village, to the swallows darting across the ravines of the countryside. Life – and the nature of a light that he sees spring into activity every night at what he thought was a totally lifeless, empty forest area on land separated from his lookout post in his back garden by a deep, wooded gorge… Full review...
This is Your Life, Harriet Chance! by Jonathan Evison
The cruise to Alaska came as something of a surprise to Harriet Chance. It had been booked by her husband, Bernard, before his death and almost on a whim Harriet decided that she would go and take her best friend Mildred along with her. She might be seventy eight, but when she thought about it there didn't seem to be any reason not to go and it might give them both a new lease of life. She and Bernard had been married for fifty-five years, but the cruise would not work out as she hoped and for some of the strangest of reasons. Full review...
Escape Attempt by Miguel Angel Hernandez and Rhett McNeil (translator)
Immigration and radical contemporary art: the two themes of Miguel Ángel Hernández's Escape Attempt are debate-provoking even on their own, but brought together into one plot, they fall nothing short of creating a painfully current and ruthlessly polemic novel. The brave choice of subject matter takes the reader on a journey that revolts, angers, and excites: Escape Attempt is an experience that does not leave the reader untouched, and locks them in a page-turner that cannot be escaped. Full review...
When the Floods Came by Clare Morrall
Sometime in the not-too-distant future, a devastating virus has decimated the population of the UK, striking humans and animals alike and leaving Britain in a state of quarantine for decades. Most of the survivors have been left infertile and the majority of people have relocated to Brighton, where they rely on airdops from surrounding nations in order to survive. Farming is impossible, as weather conditions are harsh and extreme, including tornadoes, floods and blizzards. Not everyone chooses to live in Brighton though. In a block of flats in Birmingham live the resourceful Polanski Family: Popi, Moth, Roza, Boris, Delphine and Lucia. Moth and Popi prefer solitude and isolation and their make-do-and-mend philosophy has ensured their survival in this unconventional environment. Full review...
The Other Mrs Walker by Mary Paulson Ellis
A photograph. Six orange pips sucked dry. A Brazil nut with the Ten Commandments etched into the shell. An emerald dress dripping with sequins. This is the legacy of Mrs Walker, who died alone in a freezing Edinburgh flat, drinking her final glass of whisky. Nylons wrinkling at the knee, white hair hair dyed red, scratches on her cheeks, hollow bones and a liver like paste. Who was Mrs Walker and why did she die alone? Full review...
13 Ways of Looking At A Fat Girl by Mona Awad
Liz is fat. Not just plump or chubby or, as my director often describes people, bubbly, but full on, capital F fat. It's perhaps one of the frustrations of this book that we never get a number, because she's clearly obsessed with what the scale shows, but won't share that reading. Full review...
The Last Thing I Remember by Deborah Bee
Contemporary writers are mining a rich seam of psychological thrillers and, within this genre, I seem to be particularly attracted to stories featuring comatose protagonists. Comatose protagonists? Isn't that a contradiction in terms? True, you do normally expect a protagonist to, well, do something. And Deborah Mee's heroine Sarah does nothing at all, other than listen, and try and remember, from her unconscious state. In her narrative she offers us nothing more than fractured memories and snippets of conversations from around her bedside. Yet with these meagre tools she helps the reader build up a vivid picture of what is happening around her, of her own character, and of the events leading to her hospital admission. As a reader you gradually piece together what made Sarah what she is today. At first you see an apparently successful career woman in a loving marriage but, as layers are gradually removed, what lies beneath becomes apparent. Sarah's controlling husband has a sinister brother who comes to sit by her bedside, while her toxic mother wages an ongoing war of words with Sarah's spineless father... At times I wanted to weep for what happened to Sarah; at other times I wanted to scream at her for letting it happen. Full review...
The Forgetting Time by Sharon Guskin
Janie is a single mother, living in New York with her pre-schooler Noah. It's just the two of them, so it's rather disconcerting when Noah screams out in the night, calling for his real mom and asking when he can go home. Night after night this happens. There's other things, too. He hates water and regularly goes to nursery stinky because his mother simply cannot get him in the bath. He has the odd bizarre turn of phrase that comes out, far beyond what one might expect for a child of his age. He knows certain things, too, without anyone understanding how he picked up this knowledge, whether it be the names of different reptiles or the plot of books he's never read. Full review...
When The Sky Fell Apart by Caroline Lea
That was the order in which things happened: the sky fell apart, Jersey's beaches were bombed, Clement the island's butcher went up in flames where he stood and then the arrival of the German army. This will change the life of the island including herbalist Edith, neglected child Claudine, former fisherman Maurice and English Doctor Carter. Each of the four lives on the perimeter of the island's community but each will come to depend on the other three in order to continue living. Full review...
The Senility of Vladimir P by Michael Honig
In the not-too-distant future, Vladimir Putin is slowly succumbing to dementia, hidden from the world at large in a secluded private nursing home. Nikolai Ilyich Sheremetev has what sounds like the most difficult job in the world: he's the old man's nurse. Full review...
Blood Brothers by Ernst Haffner and Michael Hofmann (translator)
It's Berlin, and the Nazis are on their way to power, even if they will never cross these pages themselves. The city – huge, glamorous, bustling, vicious in the way it can swallow people – is home to a countless hoard of teenagers, but we focus on just a few, most of whom have been in some corrective institution or other before now. They call themselves the Blood Brothers, even if all they share is the most unglamorous drudgery of going from one doss-house to another, balancing the cost of a few cigarettes with that of a warm room for a few hours or some stale rolls to eat. But en route to them is another 'Borstal' escapee, Willi. Surely his fate is going to be nothing if not more of the same? Full review...
Waltzing in Vienna by C G Metts
Filmmaker C G Metts has written four nonfiction books, several of them of local interest to South Carolina natives and visitors. This is his first novel, however, and you may be surprised to learn that it is an enjoyable chick lit/women's fiction romp. Three girlfriends meet up again in Charleston; in their early forties, they're facing turning points in their professional and personal lives. As they reminisce about summers spent together at Folly Beach during college and resume their communal marijuana smoking habit, they summon the courage to decide what they want from middle age and refresh their sex lives. Full review...
The Dyslexic Hearts Club by Hanneke Hendrix and David Doherty (translator)
I recently reviewed a novel by another Scandinavian novelist, Helle Helle, This Should be Written in the Present Tense, and I expected this novel by Hanneke Hendrix to be very similar. It wasn't. That's not totally a bad thing – many people will enjoy the fast-paced, dialogue driven novel that The Dyslexic Hearts Club is. It just wasn't exactly what I was expecting. Full review...
Blackheath by Adam Baron
Househusband James is happy in Blackheath. He's started doing stand-up again so that he too has an achievement in his life to balance wife Alice's award winning poetry. Children Ida and Dominic are doing well so all is great. Elsewhere in the area Amelia is equally happy with her actor husband Richard, her own career and children Niamh and teenage Michael. Sometimes happiness isn't enough though and, as the worlds of the two families start to mingle, things start changing for each of them. Full review...
Afterlight by Rebecca Lim
A freak motorbike accident that claims the life of your parents is really all it takes to make your world fall apart. You might hope that a new beginning in a different high school is going to jumpstart your life; that a chance to reinvent yourself as just Sophie Teague, rather than Sophie-The-One-Whose-Parents-Died might just be all you need to get by. But before Sophie gets the chance to find out, she is visited by Eve. Eve isn’t like other girls. She is beautiful and mesmerizing and Eve needs Sophie to be her go-to girl. Because Eve can’t do much for herself since she died. Eve is a ghost and dealing with the dead who have unfinished business could be the biggest challenge of Sophie’s life. Full review...
All The Stars In The Heavens by Adriana Trigiani
It was 1935 and Loretta Young wanted fame and success in Hollywood. Part of it was being young (just twenty one) and beautiful but she was also conscious that the money she brought in mattered to her family. She was hungry for love too: her father had left when she was young. Her step-father had done little better and there was a need for a man she could love and look up to. She developed a reputation for falling in love with her leading men: first it was Spencer Tracy but on the set of The Call of the Wild she fell for Clark Gable - and he for her. Full review...
The Possibilities by Kaui Hart Hemmings
Sarah's son has just died in an avalanche and as such this is a book very much about bereavement and grieving and what next. It's odd to think that a basis of personal tragedy made this an intriguing read, but that was the case. Full review...
The Postmistress of Nong Khai by Frank Hurst
Mike Rawlins' rise through the ranks in the investigation department of Customs and Excise has been steady, culminating in his dream posting: attachment to the British Embassy, Thailand. It gets even better when he realises a name from his past is also operating out of the country on the other side of the law. Mike's attempts to nail him over the years have become personal and now, thanks to local informant or 'Postmistress' Lek, prosecution is a possibility. What Mike doesn't realise is the cost the chase will exact… not yet anyway. Full review...
Midnight in Berlin by James MacManus
Berlin – 1938. In the British Embassy, military attaché Colonel Macrae prepares to defy his ambassador and government, and assassinate Hitler. Elsewhere, Sara Sternschein appears on stage in her role as the lead in the Gestapo's brothel – the Salon Kitty. She has no choice, her twin brother is being held in a concentration camp. In the Gestapo Headquarters, Obergruppenfuhrer Joaqim Bonner waits and watches – with his eyes on Sara Sternschein as his secret weapon. As Colonel Macrae gathers intelligence for his mission he finds himself drawn to Salon Kitty – but does Sara hold the key to thwarting Hitler, or is Macrae being manipulated? Full review...
The Astonishing Return of Norah Wells by Virginia Macgregor
Fay, Adam, the girls teenager Ella and little 6 year old Willa seem a happy family. They are on the whole, it's just Ella who isn't. Fay, named by the ladies across the road 'The Mother that Stayed' moved in after Norah, 'The Mother that Left', went. Now she's taken Norah's place in the family's life and Adams' bed. Ella just wants her mother to come home and then, 6 years after she went, Norah does. How will she fit in and, just as importantly, why did she come back? Full review...
Try Not To Breathe by Holly Seddon
In Try not to Breathe Holly Seddon offers an addition to the somewhat overflowing thriller shelves. Of course, the reason this particular segment is bursting at the seams is because thrillers, especially psychological ones, are just so compelling. And there have been some good - and hugely successful - books in this category out there of late (before-I-go-to-sleep-I'll-be-gone-with-a-girl-on-a-train). So how does Holly Seddon match up? Full review...
The Last of the Bowmans by J Paul Henderson
When Greg Bowman's eighty-three year old father Lyle dies he leaves some unfinished business. It's up to Greg – black sheep of the Bowmans – to start learning the meaning of the word responsibility and sort his errant family out, preferably without them noticing what he's up to and assisted only by the gentle nudging of his father's ghost. Can he do it before he returns to his altogether more carefree life in America, and without causing any further trouble? As Greg begins to sort out his father's house and affairs, he untangles some complicated webs of deception and unearths a few family secrets, including some of his own. Full review...
The Man Who Drew Triangles: Magician, mystic or out of his mind? by Haraldur Erlendsson and Keith Hagenbach
'Magician, mystic, or out of his mind?' Consider the following: 27-year-old Olaf, disembarks a flight from his homeland, Iceland, seats himself on a broken terminal at Heathrow airport, and begins to meditate, to reach his guides. Attracting the attention of Irish airport security, he is eventually sectioned and escorted to a psychiatric unit. Full review...
Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs by Lina Wolff and Frank Perry (translator)
Upstairs, a flat where mother and daughter struggle from pay cheque to pay cheque; downstairs, the love nest of a dying writer and her last of many conquests. Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs is a multilayered testimonial to the writer, the eccentric Alba Cambó, gathered by Araceli, the teenager upstairs. Through Araceli's bird's-eye view, anecdotes unfold as told by lovers, business acquaintances (often both – for with Alba Cambó you can never know), and the short stories of Cambó herself. Full review...
Dinosaurs on Other Planets by Danielle McLaughlin
Seeing as this book is clearly a talented author hitting the ground running, I will dispense with any major preamble. We start with a tale of a daughter affected by the emotions of her parents as they separate – and the influence of a certain school-teacher – from the mother's point of view. An ancient input shows how alien, and the modern day domesticity how regular, the isolation of a woman can feel, as events are peppered by minor acts of destruction. But men can be alienated too – especially one, a reluctant guest at a party for children hosted by someone he once had an affair with – he feels the new form of this influence in the light of another one he has had to try and abandon. 'All About Alice' – that's what the title character wants to say but has nobody to speak it to, but is it her – mid-40s and single, living with her father – that is most removed from her dreams or her old friend and now child factory, Marian? And we complete a lap of the calendar with the wintry tale of a man unable to tell his work superiors of the problems he faces at home – a new home, recently built like so many one sees while driving round Ireland. Full review...
