Prayer | Richard Foster

This is my favourite book on a favourite topic: prayer. Foster’s main aim in this instructional book is not a how-to so much as go-and! He wants us to experience a deeper connection with God, to spend time with Him and find our way in the world through an intimate and personal connection with God, which can only be achieved through prayer.

In these 21 chapters Foster shows us 21 different ways of conversing with God.

 It is incredible to see and learn of these ways which like roads, can lead to a single destination but through varying landscapes. I read this book every couple of years, for the last ten years or so and have given it away to many. People of all denominations and creeds can benefit from reading this book and will group in their spiritual life regardless of where they are at in their Spiritual journey.

Foster is the author of many books and I regard him highly and his works inspirational.

Daniel | Henning Mankell

What a remarkable story. It's the sort of novel that takes your breath away because of its intensity and depth of perception into someone's life and suffering. Mankell is a Swedish author who has written the Wallander crime novels which are now portrayed in a tv series so this is a bit of a departure from his usual stories but a very powerful one none the less.

Daniel is the story of a Swedish collector who is in the Kalahari desert when he comes across an orphaned black child whom he adopts and renames Daniel. He takes him back to Sweden where he tries to make a living out of showing his collection of insects and his black son. It's set in the 1800's at a time when many people had never seen a black human being and it causes a huge sensation.

The first part of the book is narrated by the collector, and the second part by Daniel. I think Mankell has captured Daniel's voice beautifully and there is such agony and longing in his childish desire to find his way back to the desert. He is only about 9 or 10 years old and he tries to understand the Swedish culture he lives in but his an interior dialogue is with his parents and the desert he wants to go back to. He tries to learn to walk on water, then decides a ship will have to carry him back and makes a few attempts to run away to a sea port. He grows more and more desperate and eventually the novel comes to a close with the only possible outcome to his desires.

It's a beautiful story told very well and I enjoyed reading this novel, hoping against hope that Daniel would find his way home.

Percival's Planet | Michael Byers

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. The hunt for Planet X in the 1920's and 30's in Flagstaff, Arizona was not something I knew much about. Having read Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything" I became intrigued with some of the personalities involved so I read this book. It is a fictionalised account but has all the main characters from real life who were involved with the exhausting search for a planet they thought made mathematical sense but couldn't quite see.
What I really loved about both books is the crazy characters who make up the scientific community involved. Hard to believe they were real. Byers is very good at characterisation and in his book he depicts the search from a few different perspectives. People start in various walks of life in different cities of the USA and end up in Flagstaff.
Clyde Tombaugh is a farm boy from Kansas who aspires to bigger things and starts making telescope lenses in the barn. He knows he can get off the farm and a chance letter he writes to Lowell Observatory hits the mark and he is employed in the search for Planet X. Felix DuPre a wealthy man with not much to do and too much money decides to head out west to find dinosaurs. He ends up living close to the Observatory and becomes embroiled in the lives of the hunters.
Mary and Hollis Hempstead are brother and sister who through encounters and misadventures also end up at Lowell Observatory. Mary is slowly going insane and Hollis is trying to reinvent himself as an artist. And they all have a part to play in the search, and discovery of Pluto.
Not only is it an interesting story, it is beautifully told. Highly recommended.

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The Shack | Wm. Paul Young

A lot has been said about this novel and there are many blogs dedicated to it and many will be familiar with the general story line. I think this is a very good allegory, showing that in the modern day we can still have a new perspective on the Christian story. 

Just as C.S. Lewis in his writing embodied a new way to see Christianity, this novel opens up the way for our imagination and reinterpretation of facets of the Christian faith. Very well done and I hope he continues with this kind of work.

What we did on our holiday | John Harding

I was so pleased to come across another Harding. I have thoroughly enjoyed Florence and Giles, and One Big Damn Puzzler, and with this one I was not disappointed.
Harding creates memorable characters and there are laugh out loud parts. The holiday in question is a return to Malta for Nick, his wife and his elderly parents. So far, so simple. But his dad has Parkinson's disease, his mother is obese and his wife is desperate to get pregnant.
The descriptions of the challenge and routines of getting Dad out of bed every morning are treated in a humorous way although describe the degree of tedium and hardship in dealing with Dad's degenerative disease. Mum is controlled by food and there is a sadness about her condition too. Nick has a strong voice in the story and he tries very hard to please everyone.
Tying all the characters together is the search for Dad's illegitimate son who was conceived during a brief stay on Malta during the War. The story is very successful because Harding has just the right elements to make us sympathise with the characters, be intrigued by the search for the lost son and gives us a touching conclusion to the story. I highly recommend Harding's books and have enjoyed all of them immensely.

Check out  One Big Damn Puzzler, Florence and Giles.

Clippings from my notebook | Corrie ten Boom

Corrie ten Boom has been an inspirational figure in my life since I was young. Not only her story of survival in a concentration camp during World War II but her abundant faith and positive outlook on life regardless of her suffering.

This small book is a collection of her insights and observations during her lifetime. She always kept a journal where she recorded her thoughts and those of others which inspired her. 

The entries are short, small bites to read and chew over.

I re read this one every few years. It has an inspiring quality to it.

Her autobiography is “The Hiding Place”.

The Winter Vault | Anne Michaels

I love Michaels’ writing. She has a wonderful way with words and images stay indelibly in my mind. In this novel a young Canadian couple Avery and Jean who meet on the banks of the St Lawrence river, embark on a journey to Egypt. They live in a houseboat moored on the Nile close to where Avery is overseeing the dismantling of the temple of Abu Simberl and its reconstruction further downriver. Jean is a botanist by vocation and passion and observes the transition of the historical monument and the environmental changes brought about by the building of the dam with mixed emotions.

The descriptions of the landscape, the heat and the people are gorgeous and we get a sense of the desert's beauty. The marriage begins to unravel after the loss of a child and there is a huge sense of sadness and pathos as they return to separate lives in Toronto. They long for healing and yet are torn apart by the death of their baby. The story shifts to an affair Jean has with a Polish artist and Avery begins architecture school. We meet more characters who are beautifully drawn. 

I loved this book because Michaels puts together beautiful sentences, uses words carefully and is evocative in her writing. She also really 'gets' people and translates their emotions well into a story. This is a beautiful book!
She is also the author of Fugitive Pieces which has been made into a great film. 

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The Story Sisters | Alice Hoffman

I just finished this remarkable book. It packs quite a punch and delivers it in a beautiful style. I was a bit apprehensive given it is a little bit Gothic and deals with child abuse, but it does both in an understated way so that we capture detail out of the corner of our eyes rather than fully in the face.

The Story sisters of the title are three girls growing up on the north east coast of the USA. They are Elv, Claire and Meg and they are very close in age and have a very close relationship in which they create a secret language. They live in a big old house with a huge tree outside their attic bedroom. Also they have a French Grandmother so they spend their summers in Paris which adds a gorgeous European old world touch to the story and becomes very  important at the end.

Into this idyllic childhood steps a teacher who entices Claire into his car. Elv sees this happen, senses danger and yanks Clair out of the car and goes in her stead. The abuse is never graphically stated but it changes Elv and the whole family's life for ever. Various kinds of personal tragedy follows the girls in their teen years. Elv becomes an addict and absconder, and is taken to a rehab centre. Claire and Meg try and make sense of the separateness they feel from her and each other after that day. Meg is never told about what happens and the secrecy of the event really hurts the family, as mother is never told either.

I was really taken by this book, the light hand which describes the story intrigues and reveals little by little the depth of love that can happen between siblings and within a family.
Hoffman has written many novels and on the strength of this one I will investigate her other ones. Well worth a read.

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The Forgotten Highlander | Alistair Urquart

How much can humans endure? This is a book which should be compulsory reading for everyone over 12. Alistair Urquart is a Scottish lad, from the Highlands, he gets called up and goes to war. I heard of him being interviewed on Radio New Zealand on the 27th of July and was astounded by him as a person. He's over 90 years old and has been telling his story to as many as he can in schools and international interviews, so that what he went though with thousands of others won't be forgotten.

After basic training they were shipped to Singapore through the Suez Canal. For most men it was the first time overseas and it seemed like a huge adventure. Urquart often comments on how young they were and how naive. There is a sense that these lads were a small cog in a very big war machine.
Singapore fell to the Japanese, and Urquart was taken prisoner. After a few months in Selarang Barracks prison camp he was shipped to Hellfire Pass. The Burma Railway was being built at huge human cost well beyond anything the Allies were aware of. They built a bridge over the River Kwai (and it was nothing like the movie!) The abuse of the POW's by the Japanese is hard to imagine. Physically exhausted, starved and beaten they worked for months on end breaking rock and cutting a path through the jungle.It is unbearable, but Urquart survived.

As the war turned against the Japanese they took POWs by ship back to Japan. As luck would have it, Urquart's ship was torpedoed and sunk. He survived on wreckage for a week or so and was picked up by a second Japanese ship. Other soldiers were fortunate enough to be picked up by American ships and news got out of what they had suffered in the POW camps of the jungle.

Urquart was deposited in the prison camp close to the city of Nagasaki...One day when he was out in the camp doing work outside he felt a strong blast of hot air. The men were mystified. Then they were rescued by American soldiers and on their way to the waiting ships they were covered in fine dust that seemed to be everywhere...The Bomb made history.

The mental and emotional scars that soldiers came home with are humanely described and he is a remarkable man to have survived. He marries and has children and goes on to have a remarkable life.
One of the things which has motivated him to tell his story after sixty years of silence is Japan's denial of what went on in the building of the railway and the part they played in WWII. He is appalled and is fighting the denials which are an insult to the thousands of British, Australia and Canadian men who lived and died in utter horror.

I highly recommend this book as an encouraging and up lifting read; the resilience of the human spirit, the discovery of strength and faith.

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The Return of Captain John Emmett | Elizabeth Speller

This book took me by surprise in it's depth and how widely ranging the story goes. It is set in and just after WWI. The main character, Laurence Bartram returns from the war to find his young wife and infant son dead. He tries to hide away by writing a book on London churches and does not successfully engage with life after war. 

Then Mary Emmett enters his life- he knew her brother. Laurence is asked to investigate why John Emmett killed himself after the war. We meet some interesting characters, learn about the realities of trench warfare and shell shock. Many young men were destroyed by simply being in the war in Europe and this book in a way pays homage to those who suffered great emotional ill.

I really enjoyed reading it because the characters were drawn in such a way that I cared about what happened to them. The plot is interesting and a bit of a who-done-it, of a gentle and intellectual manner rather than a modern graphic nature. Speller is very talented and can tell a very plausible story so I will find her other two books and read those too. Well worth reading. 

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The Return of Captain John Emmett

The Path of Celtic Prayer | Calvin Miller

I have read Miller for a few years now and this is one of his latest books. He is on a boat on his way to Ireland and is hit by a desire to investigate and emulate the Celtic mystics. He writes this book after his time of learning and praying and it is a beautiful book.

 It is decorated with Celtic knots, borders and crosses. It includes a bit of background to each type of prayer and exercises we can follow in the pursuit of prayer. It is a very experiential book, in which we are drawn into a deeper understanding of and experience of prayer. The Celts had an amazing relationship with nature and the elements and it permeates their prayers. I enjoyed it and will re-read it often because of its refreshing approach to an ancient custom.

I have also read 'Once Upon a Tree' and ' Into the depth of God' by Miller and enjoyed them both.

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Corduroy Mansions | Alexander McCall Smith

I really enjoy reading McCall Smiths books. He's quite prolific and this one is a stand-alone book, not part of any of his ongoing series. This novel is typical of his style and is a gentle read with very amusing and engaging characters. Not a lot happens but it does so beautifully! 
Corduroy Mansions is a building in Plimlico, London where the occupants of four flats interact over a short period of time. I try and figure out why his books are so good and I think it's because of McCall Smith's ability to get people so right. In their manner and dress and in what they think. It's very funny and the people quirky. 
A father is trying to put pressure on his adult son to move out so begins a dog-sharing arrangement with another London couple. His son is terrified of dogs. Will he move out? The flat downstairs has four young women all absorbed in their different lives and jobs as a colonic irrigationist, an MP's PA, an art student...They get to know the dog and his owner. 
The man in the first floor flat seems to be carrying on some sort of quiet revolution with his Sri Lankan friend. He meets the girls and the dog...It's hard to out line the plot but these interactions all lead the story along and give you good laughs along the way.
Alexander McCall Smith also wrote the "Number one Ladies Detective Agency of Botswana" series which are brilliant. And two other series set in Scotland, where he's from . He was brought up in Botswana and has captured it beautifully. He has also written many great children's books. 

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The Story Of Lucy Gault | William Trevor

I do like a good old tragedy and the Irish do it better than anyone else. Trevor William has put together a simple story with gorgeous use of language that, although sad, is full of pathos rather than depression. Only the Irish can do this!

The story is set in Ireland in the 1920's or there about. There is disquiet in the land and the land owners are being threatened by the rabble and burned out of their homes. The Gaults decide to leave their land and vast home for a while till things settle down. but Lucy, a young child of abut 7 or 8 does not want to leave her beloved fields with a view of the sea.  
Through a series of unfortunate events Lucy is tragically left behind as her parents believe her drowned. They go off to Europe and never make contact with people left behind in Ireland so when Lucy is found, no one can reunite her with her family. Not something that could happen in this day and age due to Google and the rest, but back in those days, it's totally believable. This is a family to whom something unfortunate happened and Trevor plays out the ramifications and consequences of a small act of rebellion.
I loved reading it and the story of Lucy's life is very well told. 

The Master Butcher's Singing Club | Louise Erdrich

This is one of my all time favourite novels. It is the story of Fidelis Waldvogel and friends Delphine Watzka and her partner Cyprian who try and make a life for themselves in the small prairie town of Argus, North Dakota. Fidelis and Cyprian fought in World War I and their children fight in World War II. 

When Fidelis goes home from his time as a sniper with the army he seeks out Eva, his best friend's fiancée. He tells her of his death and his promise to marry her and look after the child. Due to the poverty in Europe they head off to North Dakota to a German community where he becomes the butcher.

Delphine and Cyprian are the other main characters. They make a living as a vaudeville act who after a crisis return to Argus to Delphine's alcoholic father. In cleaning out his stench filled house they discover three bodies in the cellar and try to figure out that mystery. 

Eva and Delphine meet and become good friends. Their destinies are intertwined as Eva is nursed through her cancer which kills her. Delphine brings up her four boys who all go off to war eventually. 
There is a lot here with the themes of love, family, friendship, small town politics and the Singing club all developed into a memorable story.


The community is a German American one which is also part of Erdrich's own as well as her Native American heritage. i went on to read most of her books and they are all very good but this one is the best.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society | Mary Anne Shaffer and Annie Barrows

This is a delightful read, the sort of book you can give away time and time again because it has everything in it that makes a great story. Shaffer was in her sixties when she wrote it at the request of her many friends. She died soon after and her niece took up the editing and publishing of the novel. The story came to Shaffer after her visit to the isle of Guernsey in the 1970's where she learned of the German occupation of the island during World War 2. 

The story begins as a dialog between a young woman called Juliet who writes humorous column for her local Chelsea newspaper and Dawsey Adams, an islander. He came across her name in an old book of hers. In the correspondence between them he tells of the island, of it's many weird and funny characters and of the German occupation. This period was one of deprivation and hunger, fear and solidarity among the islanders.

The story emerges of the Potato Peel pie society which came about on the spur of the moment when a German officer interrogates Elizabeth, a local. She makes it up on the spot to cover the fact a group of friends had met to feast on a contraband pig. 
But in the end, the group decides to start reading and meeting together and through literature they find solace in those desperate times.

Other surviving members of the group follow Dawsey's lead and write to Juliet about their wartime experiences. She in turn ends up visiting the island. 
All in all it is a very satisfying read. Loads of interesting characters, anecdotes and the historical backdrop of the German invasion are woven into a great read.

Top Ten New York City | Eyewitness Travel Guide

I loved reading this book, cover to cover! The Eyewitness Travel guides are by far my favourite in layout and information. I have read the longer guides before but this is the first 'Top Ten' city series that I've had. It is a really good guide to New York City for when you have a short time and want to see the best of. If you have a longer time, the longer guides would be better but this one will fit in my pocket, has a pull out map and I can get a good first-trip impression of the city. 

It has top ten lists on: buildings, restaurants, city oasis, cheap eats, hotels, sports events, meeting places....Very well organised.

Check out their other guides for excellent information, maps and guides to buildings. DK is the publisher and their are renown for the quality of their publications.

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Island Beneath the Sea | Isabel Allende

This is such a treat. Allende's novels is such a treat. She veers from her usual landscapes and characters to the Caribbean and the island of Haiti. The story involves whites, Negro slaves, mulattoes, quadroons and every shade in between. I learned a lot about of Saint-Domingue the original name of this island. It was a French colony, populated by rich white French, some Spanish and the imported slaves which worked in the sugar cane industry. It appears to have been one of the worst colonies for a slave to live in with the cruelty towards them incredible to read about. The novel follows the Valmorain family and their slaves and the children the master has with his wife and with his slave woman Tete. The chapters go between the voices of the narrator telling us the general story and Tete's chapters in which she  tells us her perspective.

Eventually there is an uprising and the family flees to New Orleans where they have to adapt to new ways of dealing with slavery and then to the news that Napoleon has sold Louisiana to the Americans.

It's a great story well told, and the characters are memorable as in most of Allende's novels and well worth reading.
Other books by Allende are "Eva Luna", "Stories of Eva Luna", "Paula", "Daughter of Fortune", "Portrait in Sepia", "Zorro", "Ines of my Soul", "The Sum of our Days".

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The Feast Of the Goat | Mario Vargas Llosa

This is a difficult book. Not lacking in interest and well written, but I just struggled to read and finish it. Although I am bilingual Spanish/English I found it difficult to keep track of all the major players given their lengthy Spanish names and the vast number of characters.

This is the story of Urania Cabral, a lawyer in NY who returns to her native Domincan Republic after self-imposed exile. Through her story we learn of her father's involvement in the Trujillo dictatorship and her motive for fleeing. We also have in between chapters from a historical point of view in Trujillo's voice and yet other chapters from the point of view of the subversive element plotting to kill Trujillo. We go from one narrative string to the other and it just gets a bit too embroiled in the politics and I lost sight of the humanity of the characters.

The translation is a bit wooden, nothing like the translations of Isabel Allende's novels.
All in all, it's hard work.

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The Legend of Bass Reeves | Gary Paulsen

I have read this to my kids. It's hard to find a story based on the wild west suitable for kids and inspiring to boot. This is the story of Bass, an African American who was born a slave and grew up around taxes and Arkansas in the 1850's. His mother and Bass ran the ranch for a retired ranger who spent most of his time drunk. after a violent dispute Bass had to flee and he went to live in the Indian Territories of the North. There he learned of their way of life and had twenty five years to learn their languages and culture. 

After Abraham Lincoln issued the emancipation Proclamation freeing all slaves, Bass emerged and started life as a rancher and family man. 
When in his late fifties lawlessness in the Indian territories came to the attention of the government, Bass was asked to become a Ranger. He hunted and detained hundreds of outlaws, horse thieves and criminals who victimised the ranchers and homesteaders. He worked till he was over 70, when he had gone out on over three thousand missions. 

He went on to be the constable of Muskogee where between 1907-09 there were no crimes committed due to the fact citizens respected him and criminals feared him.
This is a great story to read with or by children from about six to thirteen. i will hunt down some other books by Paulsen.

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The Glass Castle | Jeannette Walls

This book should be compulsory reading for all teens who think they have a tough life and their parents just don't get it. I think it's reassuring to say in the light of this non-fiction autobiography that 99% of us have had a pretty normal life....

The Wallis parents were hippy in attitude to life and parenting. They lived in the Arizona desert, in trailer parks, derelict stations and finally as homeless in New York. The opening scene is of Jeannette at three years of age cooking sausages on a stove and tipping the whole thing on herself and ending up in hospital. She remembers this not as a bad thing but as an opportunity to be in a safe, comfortable environment not moving around and being cared for by doting nurses. 

He mother is an airhead artist and her father an eccentric genius who is always on the verge of the next big breakthrough...if only he could stop drinking. The family moves around a lot because they have to keep one step ahead of debt collectors. Income is spasmodic and mostly rely on rent on property the mother has in Texas. 

In the end they go back to Virginia to where the father comes from. I thought the previous locations were depressing but honestly, that town takes the cake. It's a very dull, damp and depressed town which depends on the coal mines around it. They live in a ramshackle house with no electricity or toilet...The parents deteriorate and the kids take over the budgeting and managing of the family. it's incredible to read of the role reversal and the dreams and aspirations they have. Jeannette and her older sister begin to save to send her to new York. Eventually they both make it and begin stable lives there. They bring their brother up and eventually all become reasonably well adjusted. 
After a few years the chaotic parents arrive unannounced and ask to be put up for a while. eventually they chose to live on the streets and then squat in a building which the father rigs up with power from the main grid.

It's a remarkable book to read because it champions the resilience of the human spirit. I don't know how Jeannette and her two siblings came through all this and have relatively normal lives now. Their youngest sister did not and seems to have inherited her parents' chaotic nature. There are many stories out there about difficult childhoods and how scared and traumatised the kids are forever and how things repeat themselves. But this story is one of triumph over adversity and overcoming obstacles by dreaming and persevering. 

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The book Thief | Markus Zusak

A friend suggested I read this but I was a bit dubious given the narrator is Death! No offence but I didn’t think it would be a cheery book. Cheery it may not be but it’s an extraordinary narration of a part of history many authors have tackled. The setting is Europe before and during WW2. Death is having a boom time with the record of dead people he’s collecting all over the place.

But at one death he meets a girl who steals a book, Liesel Meminger. She is on a train with her mother and brother on the way to being delivered to foster parents. Her father is a communist and her mother chronically ill. On the way the brother dies and as they bury him the grave digger drops a book out of his pocket.

Using “The Gravedigger’s Handbook” her foster father teaches her to read and for the duration of her lifetime Death keeps an eye on her. She continues to steal books throughout her time in Germany and it brings her into relationships with very different people. She befriends the mayor’s wife and is allowed into her library of unread books.

The family takes in and hides a Jewish man who makes Liesel two books in which he tells her of his life and she is inspired to begin writing a book about her own life. Max eventually leaves and the family lives in constant fear of the Gestapo and the Nazi regime. She is in the basement reading when her street is bombed and she is the only survivor. In her distress she drops The Gravediggers Handbook and Death picks it up and keeps it. Liesel is eventually reunited with Max and lives in Germany till after the war. We are told she finds her way to Sydney, Australia and eventually dies there. Death is reunited with her and hands her the book and his most secret thought which he cannot share with anyone else “I am haunted by humans.”

The beauty of the story comes from the amazing perspective Zusak gives Death. He sees the continents in colour hues and is incredibly perceptive of human behaviour given he’s been around forever. 

Well worth reading and don't be put off by Death!

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The Behavior of Moths | Poppy Adams

I loved reading this book. It’s a very well told story, innocuous you may think, but it packs a bunch once the truth is revealed…Kind of creepy without being frightening. It has a Gothic house, family tensions and a narrator who you realise eventually, is unreliable. Vivien and Ginny are two sisters reunited after decades apart. They both have secrets that need revealing. Ginny tells most of the story. She’s a moth expert who has lived all her life in the old family mansion. She basically hides away in the attic where she plies her moth trade.

Vivien bursts onto the scene. She hasn’t been back to the house in fifty years and wants to spent the rest of her life with her sister. There are clashes and glimpses of a sinister childhood. The atmosphere tenses and things begin to unravel as we try and put the puzzle together. Ginny kept secret their mother’s alcoholism and violence. Vivien secretly believes she knows the real manner of her mother’s death…

As the sisters tussle with the unraveling of their family’s story we are drawn in and at the climactic point in the story we begin to question the veracity of the narrator we’ve come to believe. What a great read!

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The Poisonwood Bible | Barbara Kingsolver

This is a great story. It has everything in it to make us forget to eat and drink as it transports us to Africa.

There are some seriously troubled people in this book who seek redemption and who progress through life creating chaos and disturbing us at every turn. Meet the Prices, a missionary family from Georgia in 1959 who move to the Belgian Congo. They arrive full of zeal and self-righteousness. The image of them getting off the plane is indelibly fixed in my mind as it’s so beautifully drawn in words. They are wearing most of their clothes layered one on the other, with pockets full of small domestic implements…The story is narrated by the five women in the family, Orleanna who is the mother and her daughters Rachel, Leah, Adah and Ruth May.

The father tries to convert and change the natives. And slowly goes troppo. The children try to cope with being uprooted from southern USA to deepest darkest Africa and a father who is slowly loosing all sense of reality. There are mutinous natives, ferocious animal and murderous insects as well as the political turmoil Congo goes through in the 1960’s.

As the girls grow up they become aware of the complexity of the natives and their culture and embrace them. The father, however, cannot. Eventually tragedy ensues and the Price women flee and leave him to his folly. Their story is followed through to the 1990’s.

It’s a brilliantly written book a story which delivers at every turn. Kingsolver has a wonderful gift for poignancy and storytelling.

I went on to read all of her books and have enjoyed them all.

“Prodigal Summer”, “The Bean Tree’, “Pigs in Heaven’, ‘The Lacuna’.

Oscar and Lucinda | Peter Carey

There is a visual richness in this book, a sumptuous to read. I loved the easy way in which Carey’s writing translates so well into my imagination. It’s the story of Oscar Hopkins, an Anglican priest and Lucinda Leplastrier who has bought a glass factory. On the boat over to Australia they find out they are both compulsive gamblers. Lucinda bets Oscar that he cannot transport a glass church from Sydney to Bellingen, a remote settlement four hundred kilometres away. This bet changes their lives for ever. The Australian landscape and Carey’s style are moving and engrossing. The story is well told as are most of Carey’s books. 

Well worth a read. And the movie with Ralph Fiennes and Cate Blanchett is wonderful.

Burnt Shadows | Kamila Shamsie

This book is a bit weird, not in style but in scope. And although the structure holds together I wonder if Shamsie was trying to tackle too many good ideas in one book.

It starts on the day the Bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, 9 August 1945. Hiroko is a young woman in love with Konrad, a German living in the city. He dies, she moves to India to meet his sister who has married a British lawyer in Dilli. This move happens months before Partition and the formation of Pakistan. Hiroko marries an Indian and then moves to Pakistan. In all this the story has a lot to say about race relations, religious differences and the development of modern society through tragedy, displacement, invasions and nationality. 
Hiroko has a son who feels like a misfit and with his gifting in languages becomes embroiled in the conflicts between Pakistan, India, Afghanistan and America. These strands all pull together through the character of Hiroko and her relationships with the other main characters. She moves to New York and then 9/11 happens....As you can see, there are lots of opportunities to comment on conflict and war, immigrants and  nationality. 

I kept asking myself if it was too much but have come to the conclusion that the strength of the characters encourages us to keep being engaged with the themes. 
As a matter of interest, the burnt shadows of the title are the shadows one can see now on walls in Nagasaki and Hiroshima which are all that is left of people. They were totally consumed by the Nuclear Bombs and as the shock wave passed through them it imprinted their shadow on what was behind them. I have seen them in Hiroshima and it is the most startling and moving memorial I have ever seen. Shadows that show us the utter barbarity of war. This is Shamsie's fifth novel. She is one of Pakistan's most famous authors.

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I Know This Much Is True | Wally Lamb

This book was my introduction to Lamb’s novels. And I really loved it. He’s a great storyteller with believable characters who are quirky and live impossible lives.

This is the story of Dominick Birdsey and his schizophrenic twin brother Thomas. His life is a constant search for his identity and his place in a family dominated by his step-father Ray. Dominick finds and reads his Sicilian grandfather’s memoir and discovers his family’s roots and its darkest secrets.

There is a lot going on with the characters. Thomas is unstable though on medication and Dominick takes it upon himself to see him through hospitalisations and the horror of self-mutilation. Dominick's only child dies of SIDS and his lover's child ends up with HIV.

Lamb's skill as a storyteller is putting all these characters on the page and making the story plausible. Through larger-than-life people he lets us explore different outcomes from the ones we might search for in real life.

The reason I like reading this book is the mixture of characters and their exploration of themes we can all relate to like our desire to belong, being alone, wanting to be loved and accepted. Through their lives we can come to appreciate a different perspective on our own introspection. This is a very satisfying read.

It’s also worth reading Lamb’s other novels. "The Hour I First Believed", "She's Come Undone", "I'll Fly Away"

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A Gate at The Stairs | Lorrie Moore

 I really enjoyed this novel as it is well constructed and well written. From the start there is a niggling sense of impending doom. I was alert to what might happen just around the corner. The style of the story reminded me of Anne Tyler, but more tense.

The main narrator is Tassie a young woman from the Midwest USA who is going to college in a slightly larger town than the one she grew up in. Her family is dysfunctional. Her mother seems to spend a lot of time convalescing in bed. In a rural town full of farmers Tassie's dad is mocked as he is a hobby farmer growing eccentric crops for restaurants in the big city. Her brother Robert seems full of potential but encumbered by his small-town view of himself so goes off into the military seeing this as a bright future. He is deployed to Afghanistan. 

Tassie needs money to live away from home while at college so applies for a job babysitting. The couple who engage her are trying to adopt and want Tassie to be part of the process. Here is where the tension mounts. Sarah and Edward seem OK but there is an underlying unease about them. Sarah is a chef who owns her own restaurant. Edward is a scientist. They end up adopting Mary Emma, an African American toddler. Tassie bonds with  Emmie as her parents become busier in their jobs and have less time for her. 
Through the story line a lot of discussion is woven in. It is definitively a post 9/11 story and the characters engage in quite a lot of dialogue regarding race issues, Islam, the state of the Nation. 

Sarah gets together with other mixed race families in the small town and they start a support group which is used as a forum for the discussions. 

Yes, tragedy and disappointed ensure. All is not well in the Midwest!
I think this is a good read, satisfying and low key though it keeps your attention.

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The Colour | Rose Tremain

I really enjoyed reading this book because I learned so much about New Zealand’s early European history. It’s the story of Joseph and Harriet Blackstone who emigrate from Norfolk to Christchurch, NZ. 

As I live in Christchurch  was great to be able to visualise their journey and arrival and consequent travel around the province of Canterbury. The harsh land they settle on nearly destroys them. The animals freeze to death in the middle of winter. It’s a tough life and the sudden discovery of gold lures Joseph away from the land and away from Harriet. 

The rest of the story is poignant and well told as each searches for survival, for meaning and love. The pursuit of happiness and meaning in a new land form Harriet and Joseph and they make choices which in turn form the character of the colonials.

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Eva Luna | Isabel Allende

As soon as I started this book I was hooked and unequivocally sold on Allende’s prose. This is the first of her novels that I read and I loved it. Of course I went on to read them all. Eva Luna is the story of a young Latin American girl who discovers
love, friendship and success through her incredible ability as storyteller. 

Eva Luna is an orphan and learns about life through meeting the people in her barrio who give her the wisdom she needs for life. The urchin who commits petty crimes and later leads a band of guerrillas; a local Lebanese who takes her in and nurtures her; the transsexual eccentric who educates her in the ways of the world; her godmother who's mind is gone and thus lives in a world populated by all the saints in her calendar. In the characters we meet a version of a South American country which is rich in it's social make up. Rich, poor, sophisticated and the simple minded are all beautifully portrayed. 

I really enjoy the way these stories capture the likeness of people and situations. 

If you enjoy this novel read "The Stories of Eva Luna" which continues the story of her life. 

“Paula” tells the tragic story of Allende’s vigil by her daughter’s bedside through a fatal illness. She recounts her family history for Paula, just in case she can hear. In "My Invented Country"  she tells of her family’s history in Chile and subsequent escape to the USA because of her family’s political affiliations to Allende. “City of the Beasts” is a short novel for older children. There are many more titles.

I have read Allende in Spanish and in English translation and both are fabulous.

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The Anthologist | Nicholson Baker

Here's a book I wish I'd read when I was doing English at high school. Although it's a novel it is very much a book about poetry. Paul, the protagonist is putting together an anthology of rhyming poetry but is unable to write the preface for it and this fills his whole life with uncertainty. His partner leaves in frustration but Paul thinks she will be back so focuses a lot of his attention on how to lure her. Paul's life is stuck in between everything, his days static and full of poetry. He sees everything in the context of poems he's read. He is obsessive about it and talks to the reader about poetry and so it becomes quite a didactic novel.

In between the instruction we get the narrative of his days, a book reading he's dreading, a trip to Switzerland to a conference and the handyman work he does just to pay the bills. Also the mouse who visits him in his kitchen every night.

I'm a bit ambivalent about this novel. I liked learning about poetry but I found Paul a bit too obsessive and his passive attitude a bit tedious. It's worth reading quickly and maybe going on to read some of the poets he mentions.

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