Tag: books about death

Night, Ma – book review

Night, Ma, by Elizabeth Knox

I had bought Night, Ma and left it on my table for a while, wondering if I really wanted to go there when there were nice, frivolous, bouncy books still on the pile to read. I finally opened it with trepidation, still bewildered as to why writers turn themselves inside out to offer up all their innermost vulnerabilities. I’m a late-comer to the intimacy of memoir. Now of course I recognise it is this very vulnerability that makes the genre so compelling. Human nature recognises and engages with truth, and truth is at the heart of every great story. Perhaps we connect with memoir in a more primal way than fiction and feel every scene, every touch, with far more intensity because it’s not just made up out of some frivolous author’s head, or some AI bot. Here’s the truth, as one woman sees it. Night, Ma comes alive through Elizabeth Knox’s almost subcutaneous observations of the people closest to her. And that’s fascinating.

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The Book of Two Ways – book review

The book of two ways, by Jodi Picoult

There are a whole lot of things to unpack in this book; I feel like I’ve come home from holiday and the case has exploded open on the bed. Books and memories and clothes falling out and there’s Egyptian sand through everything. Here is a great novel for chatty book clubs — but perhaps not recommended if you have judgemental grumps (like me).

The Egypt thing first — it’s magnificent. A great setting for a book, we see writing on the walls and dip in and out of caves and uncover stories thousands of years old. Picoult’s son is an Egyptologist and I bet the pair of them had some great mother/son talks on the original, ancient “Book of Two Ways”. Feels compellingly authentic and pretty wonderful. A simple story in situ would have been perfect.

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