Read this if you love happy endings and a cast of female characters dealing with female issues, or as some would describe women’s fiction. It is told in the alternate voices of 3 generations of a family, Flo, Grace and Neva, who are all midwives. The voices are seamless as their stories are told, which are all centered on the theme of mothering. While being a good story I felt the story lacked the drama and twists of similar types of novels.
In Prussia, in the 1830s, Hanne is a nature-loving girl on the brink of womanhood. Her family are old Lutherans, and the practice of their religion is banned, so her town sets out to emigrate to South Australia via a harrowing sea voyage. This is the interesting historical setting, but the heart of the book is a love story between Hanne and another young girl, Thea. A love for nature, the nature of love, and how nature is involved in love; it has supernatural elements, is deeply atmospheric, poetic and lyrical. Perhaps I am a touch old and jaded, but while I found it evocative and beautiful most of the time, occasionally the girls’ consuming passion became wearisome to me. For lovers of language, love, nature, and history.
Three Sisters is based on the true story of Jewish, Slovakian sisters whose love for each other sustained them through WWII and into their new lives in Israel. Consciously uplifting, and simply told, it celebrates the strength, bravery, and determination of the sisters to survive the horrors of the concentration camps, and leave the anti-Semitism of their birth country behind them to make something of their lives in the newly formed Israel. The story of these women is interesting and worth sharing, but the writing style is not at all to my taste; full of platitudes, inauthentic dialogue, too much detail about what we have read many times before, and not enough about less well-covered ground.
Once the highest-paid woman in advertising, Lillian Boxfish is now 85 years old, and it is New Year’s Eve in 1984. As Lillian heads out into New York City for the evening, we think back over her extraordinary life in the city – her career, friendships, marriage, motherhood, and divorce – interacting with its people and lamenting its changes. It’s a New York novel (with a map!), gloriously nostalgic, tender, moving, and gently hopeful. It’s about the power of human connection, and what might be gained when we take risks and connect.
The first of a six part series of autobiographical novels, this is for fans of minute detail, the inner life, and musings on death, memory, relationships, and self. The first part is about his adolescence; his relationship with his father, one New Year’s Eve party, and the second about his father’s death. It flows, like our own thoughts, back and forwards in time, from one subject to another, focusing at length on actions, and then on philosophical musings. I didn’t always like young Karl Ove very much, but then I remember myself at that age – beyond irritating. He offers up his thoughts, motivations, and his actions without judgement or obvious artifice. I listened to the audio version and it was well done. Do all Americans pronounce the word shone, as shown? That word was used often – perhaps a pointless detail, but does there need to be a point? I’m not sure if I will make it through all six, but I will be back for the second, at least.
We are back in the lovely retirement village, Cooper’s Chase, with four inhabitants who are a very long way from leading quiet lives in their retirement. Elizabeth receives a message from a man she used to know, which sends the Thursday Murder Club on a journey involving spies, the mafia, drug dealers, diamonds and murder. There are plenty of dead bodies, little value attributed to the less likeable characters, and much criminal behaviour, and yet it is a life-affirming, humorous, action packed adventure that celebrates older people and gently laments dementia.
Paul Atreides is fifteen when he moves with his royal family to the desert planet Arrakis, full of danger and ‘spice’, a drug of great value. Many possible futures open up before him as he must navigate the physical, emotional, and spiritual terrain. Dune is a tense, action-packed and atmospheric adventure about politics, religion, climate, legend, and power. The characters are engaging, the world-building immersive and fascinating, and the conclusion satisfying enough to be stand-alone, though it is part of a series. The audiobook is well done, though it does have some quirks (sometimes characters are voiced by separate actors and at other times just by the narrator, with a different accent) and I did often wonder about the spelling of names, but that’s probably only going to bother me.
Set in a dystopian near future where the climate is ravaged, everyone is microchipped, and people can be removed from their families and locked away in BestLife facilities. Mim’s husband Ben works in Indonesia, and she is at home with their two children when she hears that he is missing. As she realises how very wrong the situation is, she and the kids set off to try and find Ben. It’s a tense thriller, with a believable setting, and high adventure over land and sea. Thought provoking in expected ways about the direction of our world in terms of climate, government, and business, but also a deep meditation on motherhood; the weight of it, expectations, the physical and emotional toll, and impact on one’s sense of identity.
And now I’m caught up. I started with the third book and went back for the first and second; it worked, though I wouldn’t choose it again as the books do have significant character development for Cormac Reilly and his partner, Emma, who becomes seriously involved in Cormac’s case in this book. Irish setting (and accent if you listen to the audio as I have), interesting and compelling characters, and a satisfying mystery.
We follow the lives of different people who live around a park in London, for a year. Each chapter tells a different character’s perspective, in a different month. Through an older married couple coming to terms with the wife’s Alzheimer’s, the couple trying to conceive through IVF, the teenagers working out who they are, the older woman no longer able to care for herself, and more, we reflect on life; what makes it worthwhile, how our choices affect others, the struggles of marriage, parenthood, love, making a living. The way the stories interconnect highlights the power of connection and community, and the beauty in ordinary things.
rrlreads 