![Brown Girl, Brownstones](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1563835438l/50010858._SX98_SY160_.jpg)
Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts
Thursday 12 May 2022
A fine book let down by poor digitisation
![Brown Girl, Brownstones](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1563835438l/50010858._SX98_SY160_.jpg)
Sunday 8 May 2022
She was only Anne
Thursday 5 May 2022
"Lies, lies, adults forbid them and yet they tell so many."
![The Lying Life of Adults](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1592501402l/48753820._SX98_.jpg)
The book begins with Giovanna Trada remembering an incident when she was 12 years old: "my father said to my mother that I was very ugly". He goes further, explaining, "Adolescence has nothing to do with it: she's getting the face of Vittoria" his sister, whom Giovanna has never met. Piqued by a further description that in her aunt "ugliness and spite were combined to perfection", the young girl contrives to meet this woman to whom she bears a resemblance. As a consequence Giovanna discovers the working-class roots of her academic father, and learns that what adults say is not necessarily true.
Friday 22 April 2022
The legacy of apartheid
![The Good Doctor](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1435338950l/25800413._SX98_.jpg)
The story is told by Frank, a middle-aged, listless doctor who "had swallowed a lot of frustration over the years" and works in a hospital where there are few, if any, patients. It's set in a Homeland region of South Africa, described by Galgut in the Author's Note as "impoverished and underdeveloped [...] set aside by the apartheid government for the 'self-determination' of its various black 'nations'".
Sunday 17 April 2022
Nice use of the subjunctive mood
![Farewell, My Lovely (Philip Marlowe, #2)](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1615156635l/5000026._SX98_.jpg)
So starts Raymond Chandler's second Marlowe novel, Farewell, My Lovely.
Tuesday 29 March 2022
Ghosts of loss, death, injury and trauma
Friday 4 March 2022
This was not the face in the doorway
![The Fortune Men](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1622070282l/58170263._SX98_.jpg)
Monday 28 February 2022
A teenage boy with raging hormones
![The Rachel Papers](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328335629l/11328978._SX98_.jpg)
Monday 7 February 2022
A cock that could drill a hole through stone?
![Beautiful Antonio: Il bell'Antonio](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403397115l/13373334._SX98_.jpg)
The story is set in Italy, the Sicilian town of Catania to be precise, and concerns a sensitive young man named Antonio, reckoned by family, friends, and random women to be the epitome of an "Italian stallion". All is not as it seems tho'.
Monday 17 January 2022
My lack of imagination?
![Harmless Like You](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1526799545l/40179762._SX98_.jpg)
Thursday 6 January 2022
The worst of times
![Autumn](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1463212797l/30185164._SX98_.jpg)
It's a book firmly set in its time, that of the UK post-Brexit. Lack of funds for community services have led to libraries being closed, the way the Brexit referendum was framed has led to thoughtless tribalism, and the idea of protecting the land from invasion by foreigners is rife.
Friday 31 December 2021
The world itself is the bad dream
![The Bell Jar](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1576419547l/25851562._SX98_.jpg)
Monday 20 December 2021
A child's Christmas in...
![A Child's Christmas in Wales](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1488640021l/34461417._SX98_.jpg)
If you want something to get you in the mood for a merry Christmas, you could do no better than to pick up a copy of Dylan Thomas's A Child's Christmas in Wales. It's so short you can read it in less than an hour.
Saturday 11 December 2021
Everyone thought I was rather a strange child
![Convenience Store Woman](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1565303269l/51031906._SX98_SY160_.jpg)
Thursday 11 November 2021
Latin, cockney slang, and teenage argot
![The Emperor's Babe](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1588551952l/53322117._SX98_.jpg)
Revolutionary deaths
![Tu montreras ma tête au peuple (Folio)](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1423321283l/24861456._SX98_.jpg)
The title of the book is taken from the supposed last words of Danton who is the subject of one of its fictionalised accounts. These narratives are based on a variety of reported last moments, some apocryphal, some invented, of the unfortunate souls who were guillotined during the Terror (generally reckoned to be from 1793 to mid-1794). Each is told from a different perspective, jailers, onlookers, relatives, friends, and even an executioner.
Beautiful princesses and handsome princes
![The Swans of Fifth Avenue](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1432532921l/25596982._SX98_.jpg)
Mostly an entertaining story
![The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347300893l/16001863._SX98_.jpg)
Allan Karlsson, never "given to pondering things too long", steps out of the window of his ground floor room in an old people's home, and sets in motion a series of tragic yet comic events. By chapter five we know a little about Allan's childhood, and his philosophy of life, "Things are what they are, and whatever will be will be. That meant, among other things, that you didn’t make a fuss, especially when there was good reason to do so".
The result of idle speculation
![Hamnet](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1590323474l/50214441._SX98_.jpg)
Truth or fiction?
![The Book of Evidence](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1423955499l/24078926._SX98_.jpg)
Freddie identifies the turning points that have led him to his current situation. But if we think we can begin to understand his actions by these meaningful moments, Freddie quickly puts us right. He says, "They have significance, apparently. They may even have value of some sort. But they do not mean anything. There now, I have declared my faith.".
We can't believe anything that Freddie says. Which parts of his life are fake and which real? He tells us he might try to use what he has written as his testimony. "But no," he says, "I have asked Inspector Haslet to put it into my file, with the other, official fictions." On finishing The Book of Evidence I can only conclude that Banville has written a metafiction, an account of a murder narrated by a fictional murderer who never stops telling us stories. Deep!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Labels
art
(2)
Art & music & misc reviews
(11)
Book reviews
(201)
bookclub
(40)
books
(2)
christmas
(2)
concerts
(2)
creative-writing
(11)
essays
(3)
events
(1)
exhibitions
(3)
fiction
(156)
France
(1)
humour
(1)
Italy
(2)
Japan
(2)
journeys
(9)
limericks
(6)
music
(7)
musings
(3)
My stories
(3)
My verse & poetry
(15)
non-fiction
(38)
photography
(1)
poetry
(4)
restaurants
(2)
Riviera
(1)
Russia
(1)
short-stories
(3)
South Africa
(1)
Sweden
(1)