The Pearl That Broke It’s Shell by Nadia Hashimi is a novel about the lives of Afghan women in the present day and 100 years ago. It is a complex and often tragic story. Rahima, born into a family of all girls, is turned into a boy in the custom of bacha posh, and is given previously unimaginable freedom. It all ends when she turns 13 and is married to a man old enough to be her grandfather. Her only…
Malinche by Laura Esquivel, author of Like Water for Chocolate, is historical fiction about the life of Malinche, the Native woman who became Hernan Cortes’s interpreter during his conquest of Mexico. Today the word malinche is used pejoratively by Mexicans to describe someone who betrays their heritage. In this slim novel, Esquivel re-imagines Malinche’s life as a slave and places her inside her cultural context to help us understand the decisions she made. Accompanied by a codex, pre-Columbian style drawings,…
The Glassblower of Murano by Marina Fiorato is set in Venice, in the present day and in the 17th century, when Venetian glassblowers were the best in the world. Although this is a novel, and Corradino Manin, the protagonist, is a fictional character, the story is based on fact. In the 13th century, all glassblowing in Venice was moved to Murano, an island in the Venetian lagoon. Here, the glassblowers stumbled upon the secret of how to make perfect, clear,…
A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson is the follow up novel to Life After Life, not so much a sequel, as a companion novel. Here we meet Teddy, Ursula’s younger brother, and move back in forth in time following his life as a young boy, an old man and father, and a fighter pilot in WWII. Teddy is a likeable character, but his daughter Viola is awful and I never connected with the character of his wife Nancy, I…
Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline is historic fiction at its best. Baker Kline tells the story of Irish Catholic immigrant Niamh, later called Vivian, a young girl, orphaned in New York City in 1929 and sent on an “orphan train” to Minnesota to hopefully be adopted by a family there. Between 1854-1929 orphan trains ran regularly from the East Coast to the Mid-West carrying thousands and thousands of children who we be taken to lives servitude and farm work….
Heart and Soul, by Maeve Binchy, author of Minding Frankie and many other novels, is a book about a close knit community in Dublin centered around a new heart clinic that has just opened. Binchy writes feel good novels, creating characters the reader comes to know and care about, and although there are a few not so happy moments, mostly they are full of happy endings for all concerned. An enjoyable, if a bit predictable read.
The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion is the follow up to The Rosie Project. Don Tillman, the Australian geneticist, with Asperger’s syndrome, now living in New York with his wife Rosie, finds out she is pregnant. As he approached the problem of trying to get Rosie to marry him, he now approaches the problem of how to become a good father, very scientifically and with slightly odd methods that land him in trouble with the law. Both books are laugh…
Pomegranate Soup by Marsha Mehran is a thin novel set in a small town in Ireland where three Persian sisters open a cafe. Each chapter starts with a different recipe. The book is mildly interesting and the recipes pleasing, but it is over before the characters are developed enough to really care about any of them. An entertaining, yet forgettable read. It did give me a craving for pomegranates.
The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo is a novel set in 19th century Malaysia, about a Chinese family whose daughter is supposed to marry a recently deceased man. Although not common, this was practiced by some Chinese families at that time. What follows is a fabulous exploration of Chinese myth, folklore, superstition, and intrigue, as the reader is taken on a journey into the afterlife where a parallel world exists and young Li Lan tries to find her way in…
Light of the Moon by Luanne Rice is a very romantic novel set in the French Camargue. Full of white horses, saints, gypsies, full moons, ancient cave paintings, love at first sight and more, the novel is full of mystery and romance as only Rice can write it. Susannah Connolly is on a journey to France that she promised her late mother she would make. Little did she know it would change her life. There she meets Grey Dempsey, his…