Songbirds of Florence by Olivia Spooner
Like a very many others, Songbirds of Florence is in my Christmas shopping basket. It’s a gift for a darling Italian friend, who is far too busy this week to read my posts. I think everyone is buying this book (and it was still at number one on 14th December, so they really are) for one simple reason. Because it will make the recipient feel good. Merry Christmas!
Continue reading “Songbirds of Florence–book review”James, by Percival Everett
Do you think you know the story of Huck Finn? Think again. In this marvelous book by Percival Everett, the adventure is turned on its head and you find yourself reading a totally different story that seems to come tumbling out from between the lines of Twain’s. It’s still an adventure story, in which a boy called Huck and a slave he calls Jim run away by floating down the Mississippi river and get into all sorts of trouble, but this time the point of view belongs to James. The pair become true friends, they look out for each other, care for each other, discuss ideas and try to see the other’s point of view, but the world is different when the one telling the story is a piece of property which needs to be returned to its owner.
Continue reading “James – book review”The Writing Desk, by Di Morris
I bought this hardcover book on sight at the launch. I want it on my bookshelves immediately to start showing to people. The book itself feels like a treasure, a brand new presentation of an old world, with heavy shiny paper, crisp print and a sharp layout, illustrating a family story from the 1850s to the current day. There are old photos and copies of telegrams, letters, tickets, and all sorts of ephemera, full-page background designs in a range of heightened sepia and all overlaid with panel-squares of exquisite drawings and minimal text, just enough to tie a story through all the pictures. And what a story.
Continue reading “The Writing Desk – Book Review”Sewing Moonlight, by Kyle Mewburn
This is such a beautifully written book. So elegant, with space to breathe between the lines. I had the feeling, when I finally put the book down, of having been read to while I sat with my eyes closed.
It’s the early 1920s when our man in exile, Wilhelm, sails across the world from Germany and up the Clutha River until his progress is stopped dramatically. There are lots of ways to arrive in a town and this bizarre arrival has a strange ring of truth. He decides this is a sign he should give up the travels and put his feet on the ground here, in a place called Falter’s Mill. It’s as good a place as any to build a new life from scratch and find happiness.
Continue reading “Sewing Moonlight – book review”From the Big Bang to God, by Lloyd Geering
Not the usual sort of book I would pick up, but I have a wonderful book club who extend me, and this is a case in point. Loved the big issues like evolution and the start of everything and where did life come from and all that. Good choice for a book club as a discussion sparker. So, did Lloyd Geering come up with any answers?
Continue reading “From the Big Bang to God–book review”The Ministry of Time, by Kaliane Bradley
Yes, it’s only June, but The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley gets my book of the year so far. It’ll be a hard one to beat. Great premise, excellent characters and the hottest sex I’ve read in years. The chap in question has been dragged out of 1845 into the near future, complete with fabulous side-whiskers, a cheeky dimple, and Victorian social attitudes. Our narrator likes his nose. He had a kind of resplendent excess of feature that made him look hyperreal. She is to be his bridge.
Continue reading “The Ministry of Time – book review”Ōkiwi Brown, by Cristina Sanders
*Currently on the Longlist for the Ngaio Awards!*
The Burke and Hare anatomy murders terrified Edinburgh in the 1830s – innocents smothered and packed fresh for the anatomist’s knife. Burke was publicly hanged before a crowd of thousands. William Hare, after turning king’s evidence against his erstwhile partner, was released. Somewhere south of Dumfries near the small river port of Annan, he was set down from a cart and told to walk on to England and never return. There, he disappears from history.
The Girl From London, by Olivia Spooner
I started this on a Tuesday night and ended up crying in a café on Thursday morning. I can’t remember when I’ve been so moved by the ending of a story. There is a book within the book. When the former ended a bit too neatly I was a slightly disbelieving, until I realised that actually, well, I’m giving no spoilers, but it’s a war story, after all. I’m not usually known for my tears.
The whole story ties in well with my current interest in stories of those who immigrated to New Zealand down the years, and why they came. Children evacuees from London bombings? I had no idea. Can you imagine sending your children out of a bomb zone, and not to the close countryside, which would be wrenching enough, but through a war-infested sea to an unknown land at the far ends of the earth? And yet people did.
Continue reading “The Girl From London – book review”My Friends, by Hisham Matar
Any book that offers a description of a face ‘like a landscape liable to bad weather‘ has got my love. This is a writer with poetry in his soul. ‘We shared the city the way honest labourers share tools,’ he says of two young men finding their way around London. He describes a nurse who ‘would gently tuck in my bedsheet like a skilled cook filleting a fish.’ This is classy writing.
Continue reading “My Friends – book review”The Covenant of Water, by Abraham Verghese
“Fiction is the great lie that tells the truth about how the world lives!” says a character in the The Covenant of Water. That’s an oldie but a goodie and is perhaps is an apt quote for this book. I’ve never been to India. But with Verghese’s story it felt as though I visited every evening, in that witching hour before sleep, when a book takes me somewhere else. Reading Verghese, as I experienced before with his first novel, Cutting for Stone, is an immersive experience.
Continue reading “The Covenant of Water – book review”
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