By Elizabeth Kostova
This book is about an American girl who is still haunted by the loss of her brother who disappeared on a family hiking trip years before. She feels guilty because she and her brother had an argument just before he disappeared. Her brother had talked about wanting to visit Bulgaria (why we never know).
The young woman, Alexandra, decides to take a temporary job in Bulgaria. Soon after arriving in Bulgaria she helps an elderly
couple into a taxi - and realises too late that she has accidentally
kept one of their bags. Inside she finds an ornately carved wooden box
engraved with a name: Stoyan Lazarov. It is a funeral urn.
She asks the driver of the taxi she is in to return quickly to the hotel but she is unable to find the people the urn belongs to. She goes to the police and until they learn the name on the urn they don't seem interested. Then they do take an interest and give her the address of one of the dead man's family in a different town in Bulgaria. Alexandra and the taxi driver set off for there.
This is the first of many trips around Bulgaria trying to find the owners of the urn. Along the way they meet other members of the man's family.
As this story is being told we also have the story of the dead man. He was an accomplished violinist, working in Vienna. He returned to Bulgaria when war started to break out in Europe. He wasn't able to get jobs in an orchestra so did other work. He was arrested several times and sent to work camps.
I read a review of the book and they talk about the tortuous journey to the resolution of the book.... I agree... I don't know why there had to be all this to and fro'ing. In the end we find out that the dead man had written a history of his imprisonment and included information that will implicate a man who is aspiring to lead the country as one of the violent leaders at one of the camps.
While Alexandra is driving around with the taxi driver we find out he was a former police officer and is an acclaimed poet. Alexandra seems to like him but he is gay. For some reason she has fallen for the young man, the father of the dead man. This part doesn't seem justified, nor does the girls sadness about her brother seem to belong to the story. I don't think that she comes to any resolution about her brother in the course of the book. In the end, she and the young man go to Vienna, to bury the dead man, as this is where he wanted to be buried. He was a fan of Vivaldi.
It was an okay read but a bit labourious.... I was skipping some near the end of the book just to finish it.
Monday, 23 July 2018
Tuesday, 17 July 2018
The Gate Keeper
by Charles Todd
This is the latest book by the mother and son team. In this book Rutledge's sister has just gotten married. He wishes her the very best but is sad at "losing" the person he is closest to. After the wedding celebration he packs a small suitcase and decides to go for a drive.... if he just wanted a drive, why did he pack a bag?
As he is driving well into the night he comes upon a stopped car with a man lying shot dead on the road. A distraught woman is standing by the man. Rutledge tells the woman to take his car and go get the local police. All the woman can tell him is the murdered man was driving her home after a dinner engagement. He stopped when someone was standing on the road and exchanged a few words with the person on the road (which the woma did not hear). Then the person on the road shot him.
Rutledge offers to take over the investigation and is given permission to do so but a local police official is angered by this. Rutledge intereviews everyone he can think of and finds out that the young man was wealthy but was running a local bookstore. He seemed to be a pleasant and well liked person, so why was he killed. He did escape to Peru at one point shortly after his engagement was broken off. Could it have something to do with that?
When he meets the dead man's parents he find they, especially the Mother, have little affection or regard for him. The mother believes he killed his twin brother when a small child.
Then another man is killed, a local farmer. He is found shot on the road in front of his home. Rutledge learns that the man was lured out by a letter asking him to come and judge the quality of a cow that was for sale. The person who recommended the letter writer to the second dead man denies any knowledge of the letter writer.
Rutledge finds out that a book the bookseller, Wentworth, ordered for the Farmer was stolen from his shop. As several figures in the story serves in the war Rutledge wonders if there is an old grudge behind all this. Eventually he manages to track down who owned the book originally and is shocked to learn that the agent who handled the book sale for the woman has also been murdered.
Eventually Rutledge finds out that the woman had secretly married a wealthy man but he was killed in the war, she had left his family, where she had been working as a servant. The man's brother had sent her a copy of an old book about ancient apples that she had admired when she works with the family. What she doesn't know is that the marriage certificate that would prove her marriage has been bound intothe book (a bad "joke") by the man's brother who is now living in the family estate.
It turns out that this man's wife has been the one doing the murders as she fears someone will undo the binding and learn the truth. This will ruin her husband and her life and also ruin the financial future of their son.
These books are always entertaining, the author team do a great job of presenting England just after the second world war, sharing the lives and trials of those who survived the war, and keeping us guessing until the end.
This is the latest book by the mother and son team. In this book Rutledge's sister has just gotten married. He wishes her the very best but is sad at "losing" the person he is closest to. After the wedding celebration he packs a small suitcase and decides to go for a drive.... if he just wanted a drive, why did he pack a bag?
As he is driving well into the night he comes upon a stopped car with a man lying shot dead on the road. A distraught woman is standing by the man. Rutledge tells the woman to take his car and go get the local police. All the woman can tell him is the murdered man was driving her home after a dinner engagement. He stopped when someone was standing on the road and exchanged a few words with the person on the road (which the woma did not hear). Then the person on the road shot him.
Rutledge offers to take over the investigation and is given permission to do so but a local police official is angered by this. Rutledge intereviews everyone he can think of and finds out that the young man was wealthy but was running a local bookstore. He seemed to be a pleasant and well liked person, so why was he killed. He did escape to Peru at one point shortly after his engagement was broken off. Could it have something to do with that?
When he meets the dead man's parents he find they, especially the Mother, have little affection or regard for him. The mother believes he killed his twin brother when a small child.
Then another man is killed, a local farmer. He is found shot on the road in front of his home. Rutledge learns that the man was lured out by a letter asking him to come and judge the quality of a cow that was for sale. The person who recommended the letter writer to the second dead man denies any knowledge of the letter writer.
Rutledge finds out that a book the bookseller, Wentworth, ordered for the Farmer was stolen from his shop. As several figures in the story serves in the war Rutledge wonders if there is an old grudge behind all this. Eventually he manages to track down who owned the book originally and is shocked to learn that the agent who handled the book sale for the woman has also been murdered.
Eventually Rutledge finds out that the woman had secretly married a wealthy man but he was killed in the war, she had left his family, where she had been working as a servant. The man's brother had sent her a copy of an old book about ancient apples that she had admired when she works with the family. What she doesn't know is that the marriage certificate that would prove her marriage has been bound intothe book (a bad "joke") by the man's brother who is now living in the family estate.
It turns out that this man's wife has been the one doing the murders as she fears someone will undo the binding and learn the truth. This will ruin her husband and her life and also ruin the financial future of their son.
These books are always entertaining, the author team do a great job of presenting England just after the second world war, sharing the lives and trials of those who survived the war, and keeping us guessing until the end.
The Vineyard
by Maria Duenas
This book starts with the story of a Spaniard, Mauro, living in Mexico, who through hard work and taking some financial risks which paid off, has gone from being mine worker to a wealthy man. He has married daughter who is about to give birth and a son who he has sent away to France, to learn the mining business, because he was getting into financial trouble and romantic entrigues. His son is engaged to the daughter of another wealthy Mexican family. He hopes the stint in France will help his son mature.
As the story opens we find out that the man is on the brink of bankruptcy because he used most of his wealth to procure some mining equipment from the U.S. and with the U.S. Civil War underway his money is gone and he will not get the equipment.
He goes to a lone shark he had dealt with in his youth and strikes a devil's bargain, borrowing money to try to re-establish himself in Cuba, with the equity being his only remaining property, his fabulous house in Mexico City. If he does not make the first payment on the loan in four months he will forfeit his house.
Before he leaves for Cuba two people insist on entrusting money with him, his daughter's mother-in-law gives him money to invest. Another man approaches him asking him to take the man's sister's inheritance money to her in Cuba. He reluctantly agrees to do take the money from both people.
When he arrives in Cuba he is surprised to learn that the woman who has inherited the money does not want people to know that she knows him and does not want her husband to learn of the money.
They end up having apparently secret meetings. However her husband finds out about these meetings (perhaps the woman even dropped the news trying to get him to be jealous) and challenges the man to a billiards game. If the man wins he can have the mans wife, if he loses he must leave the woman alone. Mauro doesn't the woman but is intrigued by the challenge. He is advised by a man he has made friends with to lose the game as he thinks the husband wishes to lose his wife. So Mauro does lose the game. The husband then ups the stakes, offering property and a vineyard that he recently inherited in Spain. Mauro wins the game this time and heads to Spain to see the property and sell it so that he can make his firs debt repayment.
He finds the property and vineyards are in terrible condition. He also meets a woman who has fond memory of the property and of the family that owned the estate. It seems that the last owner didn't care about it and let things fall into disrepair as he fell further into debt. The woman confides in Mauro that she is having trouble with her step-son who is tyring to take over the family business. Her husband is still alive but seems to be suffering from a mental condition and she has been running it. She asks Mauro to pretend to be the dead owner of the property to help her cover some illegal things she has done to protect her business.
As the story goes on the man's son winds up in Spain with him, the woman whose husband lost the property in the billiards game arrives and insists Mauro give back the property. Mauro and the other woman end up locking her up, she escapes and tells people she was held against her will but Mauro and his lady friend are able to convince people that the other woman is making things up.
The book was very tense at times as you saw how desparate the man was to financially recover. Some people in Cuba had wanted him to invest in a slave trade venture but he refused to do this on moral grounds so he has some principles. As the story goes along we find out that a family story about one of the family members being shot in a hunting accident actually had the wrong person being blamed for the killing. The woman in Cuba had wooed the relative from Spain who owned the property and Vineyard in Spain to Cuba and convinced him to change his will to have her husband be the beneficiary.
In the end the man decides to stay in Spain and resurrect the vineyard. He does not make his debt repayments so loses his property in Mexico city but he does not regret it and eventually he and the woman (whose husband had committed suicide) realize they love each other.
It was very well written story but there were so many story lines, some I have not even mentioned, going on and so many intrigues it was hard to keep it all straight at times.
This book starts with the story of a Spaniard, Mauro, living in Mexico, who through hard work and taking some financial risks which paid off, has gone from being mine worker to a wealthy man. He has married daughter who is about to give birth and a son who he has sent away to France, to learn the mining business, because he was getting into financial trouble and romantic entrigues. His son is engaged to the daughter of another wealthy Mexican family. He hopes the stint in France will help his son mature.
As the story opens we find out that the man is on the brink of bankruptcy because he used most of his wealth to procure some mining equipment from the U.S. and with the U.S. Civil War underway his money is gone and he will not get the equipment.
He goes to a lone shark he had dealt with in his youth and strikes a devil's bargain, borrowing money to try to re-establish himself in Cuba, with the equity being his only remaining property, his fabulous house in Mexico City. If he does not make the first payment on the loan in four months he will forfeit his house.
Before he leaves for Cuba two people insist on entrusting money with him, his daughter's mother-in-law gives him money to invest. Another man approaches him asking him to take the man's sister's inheritance money to her in Cuba. He reluctantly agrees to do take the money from both people.
When he arrives in Cuba he is surprised to learn that the woman who has inherited the money does not want people to know that she knows him and does not want her husband to learn of the money.
They end up having apparently secret meetings. However her husband finds out about these meetings (perhaps the woman even dropped the news trying to get him to be jealous) and challenges the man to a billiards game. If the man wins he can have the mans wife, if he loses he must leave the woman alone. Mauro doesn't the woman but is intrigued by the challenge. He is advised by a man he has made friends with to lose the game as he thinks the husband wishes to lose his wife. So Mauro does lose the game. The husband then ups the stakes, offering property and a vineyard that he recently inherited in Spain. Mauro wins the game this time and heads to Spain to see the property and sell it so that he can make his firs debt repayment.
He finds the property and vineyards are in terrible condition. He also meets a woman who has fond memory of the property and of the family that owned the estate. It seems that the last owner didn't care about it and let things fall into disrepair as he fell further into debt. The woman confides in Mauro that she is having trouble with her step-son who is tyring to take over the family business. Her husband is still alive but seems to be suffering from a mental condition and she has been running it. She asks Mauro to pretend to be the dead owner of the property to help her cover some illegal things she has done to protect her business.
As the story goes on the man's son winds up in Spain with him, the woman whose husband lost the property in the billiards game arrives and insists Mauro give back the property. Mauro and the other woman end up locking her up, she escapes and tells people she was held against her will but Mauro and his lady friend are able to convince people that the other woman is making things up.
The book was very tense at times as you saw how desparate the man was to financially recover. Some people in Cuba had wanted him to invest in a slave trade venture but he refused to do this on moral grounds so he has some principles. As the story goes along we find out that a family story about one of the family members being shot in a hunting accident actually had the wrong person being blamed for the killing. The woman in Cuba had wooed the relative from Spain who owned the property and Vineyard in Spain to Cuba and convinced him to change his will to have her husband be the beneficiary.
In the end the man decides to stay in Spain and resurrect the vineyard. He does not make his debt repayments so loses his property in Mexico city but he does not regret it and eventually he and the woman (whose husband had committed suicide) realize they love each other.
It was very well written story but there were so many story lines, some I have not even mentioned, going on and so many intrigues it was hard to keep it all straight at times.
Sunday, 8 July 2018
The Lost Castle
by Kristy Cambron
I bought this book on impulse. I have been reading a lot of books about World War II lately, I am getting a bit tired of that theme and will have to try to get into some more modern or different stuff for a break...
In this book the main character Ellie, was orphaned at 11 when her parents were killed. She was raised by her Grandmother Vi, and loves her very much. Ellie is summoned to the care home where here Grandmother is suffering from dementia and failing health. Her grandmother is very restless and seems to be wating for something/someone. Ellie's grandmother starts to mumble about a brooch. Then she show Ellie a book in French and points to a story about a sleeping beauty. A picture falls out of a book with a picture of her grandmother in front of some ruins with a man.
Ellie decides to leave her grandmother and head to France. She is in a rented car and is trying to find the estate she is booked to stay at. A man drives by and is frustrated to find out that his grandfather has booked her to stay at their vineyard estate. The young man is actually Irish. Ellie insists that she has paid for accommodation and a tour guide. The man begrudingly takes her to the family home where she meets the Grandfather, a vitner.
The book also includes events at an estate in the Loire Valley during the French revolution. A young woman, Aveline is scheduled to meet her fiance, whom she has not met up that point, at a party at his estate. However the engagement party is disrupted when the building is attacked and set on fire by revolutionaries. Aveline suffers some burns and is rescued by her brother's fiance. She assumes the role of a worker on the estate to avoid being found and attacked by revolutionaries. Aveline is quite opinionated, keeps up on politics, against her fathers wishes, and actually has sympathized with the poor people of France. Her Fiancee had escaped to Paris.
Aveline is a bit scarred by the fire, including her face. She is afraid her Fiancee will not want her. Eventually he does come for her and takes her back to Paris. Unfortunately she has fallen in love with his brother. Eventually she returns to the ruined castle to tell her fiancee's brother that her sister is marrying her fiancee and she wants to spend her life with him rebuilding the castle. Word of her generosity to the poor assures that she is accepted by the locals.
Ellie wants to see the castle that people refer to as the Sleeping Beauty castle but the young man, Quinn, says the owner discourages vistors and that it is patrolled to keep people out.
As these stories are being told we learn about a young British woman, fluent in several languages, who is running for her life in the French countryside. She is found and sheltered by a French resistance fighter and they fall in love. Once they learn of her skill they have her hidden away in a basement listening to German radio traffic. She also had some incriminating information about the Germans hidden in the sole of her shoe. The shoes where entrusted to her by someone who was being taken to be executed by the Germans. She eventually reveals this information.
Quinn thinks that Ellie is just another romantic tourist. She eventually shows him the picture of her Grandmother at the castle. They later see more pictures of her Grandmother and other resistance fighters at a church in a nearby town. When Quinn and his Grandfather realize who her Grandmother is they tell her that her Grandmother was in love with the Grandfather's brother Julien, but Julien got killed in the war. The Grandmother had left behind a diary outlining everything she could find about the local resistance fighters. They tell Ellie that Julian left the castle land to her Grandmother and assume the land will now be hers. Ellie returns to the U.S. with the book her grandmother wrote, tells her grandmother she has discovered her history. Quinn, who has by now fallen for Ellie, comes to the U.S. to find her to bring her back to France.
It was a bit of a Chic Lit book but the stories were certainly well developed and suspenseful. Some of the people got to live with the men they had fallen in love with.
I bought this book on impulse. I have been reading a lot of books about World War II lately, I am getting a bit tired of that theme and will have to try to get into some more modern or different stuff for a break...
In this book the main character Ellie, was orphaned at 11 when her parents were killed. She was raised by her Grandmother Vi, and loves her very much. Ellie is summoned to the care home where here Grandmother is suffering from dementia and failing health. Her grandmother is very restless and seems to be wating for something/someone. Ellie's grandmother starts to mumble about a brooch. Then she show Ellie a book in French and points to a story about a sleeping beauty. A picture falls out of a book with a picture of her grandmother in front of some ruins with a man.
Ellie decides to leave her grandmother and head to France. She is in a rented car and is trying to find the estate she is booked to stay at. A man drives by and is frustrated to find out that his grandfather has booked her to stay at their vineyard estate. The young man is actually Irish. Ellie insists that she has paid for accommodation and a tour guide. The man begrudingly takes her to the family home where she meets the Grandfather, a vitner.
The book also includes events at an estate in the Loire Valley during the French revolution. A young woman, Aveline is scheduled to meet her fiance, whom she has not met up that point, at a party at his estate. However the engagement party is disrupted when the building is attacked and set on fire by revolutionaries. Aveline suffers some burns and is rescued by her brother's fiance. She assumes the role of a worker on the estate to avoid being found and attacked by revolutionaries. Aveline is quite opinionated, keeps up on politics, against her fathers wishes, and actually has sympathized with the poor people of France. Her Fiancee had escaped to Paris.
Aveline is a bit scarred by the fire, including her face. She is afraid her Fiancee will not want her. Eventually he does come for her and takes her back to Paris. Unfortunately she has fallen in love with his brother. Eventually she returns to the ruined castle to tell her fiancee's brother that her sister is marrying her fiancee and she wants to spend her life with him rebuilding the castle. Word of her generosity to the poor assures that she is accepted by the locals.
Ellie wants to see the castle that people refer to as the Sleeping Beauty castle but the young man, Quinn, says the owner discourages vistors and that it is patrolled to keep people out.
As these stories are being told we learn about a young British woman, fluent in several languages, who is running for her life in the French countryside. She is found and sheltered by a French resistance fighter and they fall in love. Once they learn of her skill they have her hidden away in a basement listening to German radio traffic. She also had some incriminating information about the Germans hidden in the sole of her shoe. The shoes where entrusted to her by someone who was being taken to be executed by the Germans. She eventually reveals this information.
Quinn thinks that Ellie is just another romantic tourist. She eventually shows him the picture of her Grandmother at the castle. They later see more pictures of her Grandmother and other resistance fighters at a church in a nearby town. When Quinn and his Grandfather realize who her Grandmother is they tell her that her Grandmother was in love with the Grandfather's brother Julien, but Julien got killed in the war. The Grandmother had left behind a diary outlining everything she could find about the local resistance fighters. They tell Ellie that Julian left the castle land to her Grandmother and assume the land will now be hers. Ellie returns to the U.S. with the book her grandmother wrote, tells her grandmother she has discovered her history. Quinn, who has by now fallen for Ellie, comes to the U.S. to find her to bring her back to France.
It was a bit of a Chic Lit book but the stories were certainly well developed and suspenseful. Some of the people got to live with the men they had fallen in love with.
Last Watchma of Cairo
by Michael David Lukas
The story is about a young American man, born of a Jewish Egyptian mother and Muslim Egyptian father. His parents never married. His mother took him to America to raise him, his father remained in Egypt but they had occasional contact.
The man is notified that his father has died. Shortly after he receives a package in the mail from a friend of his father's. It is a ancient piece of paper with what looks like Arabic writing on one side and possibly Hebrew on the other. The man is puzzled as to why this is all he gets sent from his father and takes a leave of absence from his academic career to go to Cairo to try to find out more about his father and the document.
In another tale we learn hundreds of years ago a Jewish Synagogue hired a young Muslim Man to be a night Watchman. This job was then handed down to his son and other sons over the centuries.
We also learn about some British people, two sisters and a man who convince that Synagogue to let them take he contents of a storage area in the Synagogue to Cambridge for safekeeping. The women are convinced that someone is stealing from the stash of papers and selling them off in bits on the black market. They fear this will threaten the opportunities for biblical scholarship and historical analysis that the documents offer. The synagogue agrees and the papers are sent to Cambridge.
When the young man arrives in Cairo he visit his uncle and the uncle's family and tries to find the man who sent him the package from his father. After many attempts to find the man's address, there are several similar addresses throughout Cairo, he contacts the synagogue and meets the man.
We learn that the man's family were the one's who were the synagogue watchmen up until the man's father. Then a scandal occurred which caused the man's father to lose his job as Watchman. During the Yom Kippur war Egyptian soldiers come to the synagogue and insist on going through it to look for weapons. The boy's father insists there are no weapons but is forced to let them in. The soldiers don't find any weapons but they do take a way a Torah of historical sigificance. The watchman is ashamed at what he let happen.
The man is given a box of his father's possessions, it contains a number of letters between the man's mother and father so the man is able to piece together some of what happened between his parents.
The man's father had made friends with a young Jewish girl in his youth. She and her family moved to Paris but she kept corresponding with the Watchman. After the man's father resigns/is fired, the young lady invites him to Paris. They have an affair and she gets pregnant. When his mother discovers she is pregnant she leaves her academic studies in Paris and takes the boy to California. He sees his father occasionally and his mother marries another man.
The man learns about the documents in Cambridge and decides to give up his academic pursuits to become a clerk preparing documents from this collection for analysis, documentation by scholars.
This book was partly about the young man coming to understand his family's past. If his father had't resigned because of the scandal, he woud not have been born. Like the book Less, it seems this character was trying to find something meaningful for his life.... preserving documents his ancestors had guarded for centuries.
The book had interesting descriptions of Cairo, including of the City of the Dead and successfully portrayed the frenetic energy and confusion in that city.
The story is about a young American man, born of a Jewish Egyptian mother and Muslim Egyptian father. His parents never married. His mother took him to America to raise him, his father remained in Egypt but they had occasional contact.
The man is notified that his father has died. Shortly after he receives a package in the mail from a friend of his father's. It is a ancient piece of paper with what looks like Arabic writing on one side and possibly Hebrew on the other. The man is puzzled as to why this is all he gets sent from his father and takes a leave of absence from his academic career to go to Cairo to try to find out more about his father and the document.
In another tale we learn hundreds of years ago a Jewish Synagogue hired a young Muslim Man to be a night Watchman. This job was then handed down to his son and other sons over the centuries.
We also learn about some British people, two sisters and a man who convince that Synagogue to let them take he contents of a storage area in the Synagogue to Cambridge for safekeeping. The women are convinced that someone is stealing from the stash of papers and selling them off in bits on the black market. They fear this will threaten the opportunities for biblical scholarship and historical analysis that the documents offer. The synagogue agrees and the papers are sent to Cambridge.
When the young man arrives in Cairo he visit his uncle and the uncle's family and tries to find the man who sent him the package from his father. After many attempts to find the man's address, there are several similar addresses throughout Cairo, he contacts the synagogue and meets the man.
We learn that the man's family were the one's who were the synagogue watchmen up until the man's father. Then a scandal occurred which caused the man's father to lose his job as Watchman. During the Yom Kippur war Egyptian soldiers come to the synagogue and insist on going through it to look for weapons. The boy's father insists there are no weapons but is forced to let them in. The soldiers don't find any weapons but they do take a way a Torah of historical sigificance. The watchman is ashamed at what he let happen.
The man is given a box of his father's possessions, it contains a number of letters between the man's mother and father so the man is able to piece together some of what happened between his parents.
The man's father had made friends with a young Jewish girl in his youth. She and her family moved to Paris but she kept corresponding with the Watchman. After the man's father resigns/is fired, the young lady invites him to Paris. They have an affair and she gets pregnant. When his mother discovers she is pregnant she leaves her academic studies in Paris and takes the boy to California. He sees his father occasionally and his mother marries another man.
The man learns about the documents in Cambridge and decides to give up his academic pursuits to become a clerk preparing documents from this collection for analysis, documentation by scholars.
This book was partly about the young man coming to understand his family's past. If his father had't resigned because of the scandal, he woud not have been born. Like the book Less, it seems this character was trying to find something meaningful for his life.... preserving documents his ancestors had guarded for centuries.
The book had interesting descriptions of Cairo, including of the City of the Dead and successfully portrayed the frenetic energy and confusion in that city.
Less
by Andrew Sean Greer
This book won the Pulitzer Prize, interesting as initial reviews were apparently not very good.
It is the story of a lonely gay author. He receives an invitation to the wedding of a former lover, a young man. He knows that he cannot possibly attend the wedding and to avoid doing so books several engagements around the world so that he can say he is not available.
One of the events has him interviewing another famous author, one has him in South America speaking about his life/rememberances of a famous poet he was in a relationship with years before. Like him and the former lover he is currently trying to avoid, there was a large age gap between the main character and his poet lover.
He goes to an event in Germany where he is one of the authors nominated for a prize.
As he travels he bumbles along through various events and adventures, feeling very sorry for himself. All the while he is remembering his time with his young lover and marking the days as the wedding date approaches.
He is trying to reconcile himself to being alone for the rest of his life, and has almost convinced himself he can do it. He hears something went amiss at the weddingbut it is only when he returns home that he finds out the young lover has left his newly married husband and has decided he loves the main character and wants to live with him.
Throughout the book there is reference to the author's first book, a modern take on the Odyssey and also references to a second book on a Robinson Crusoe kind of theme which he hopes will be a success but keeps getting rejected. He realizes rather than having a serious, admirable hero he needs to explore one who is less than perfect.
It was an okay read but I am surprised it was considered worthy of a Pulitzer Prize. Maybe it just struck a nerve with people today... the idea of what is love, what is it worth, what does it take to be worthy, can one live without love in your life.
This book won the Pulitzer Prize, interesting as initial reviews were apparently not very good.
It is the story of a lonely gay author. He receives an invitation to the wedding of a former lover, a young man. He knows that he cannot possibly attend the wedding and to avoid doing so books several engagements around the world so that he can say he is not available.
One of the events has him interviewing another famous author, one has him in South America speaking about his life/rememberances of a famous poet he was in a relationship with years before. Like him and the former lover he is currently trying to avoid, there was a large age gap between the main character and his poet lover.
He goes to an event in Germany where he is one of the authors nominated for a prize.
As he travels he bumbles along through various events and adventures, feeling very sorry for himself. All the while he is remembering his time with his young lover and marking the days as the wedding date approaches.
He is trying to reconcile himself to being alone for the rest of his life, and has almost convinced himself he can do it. He hears something went amiss at the weddingbut it is only when he returns home that he finds out the young lover has left his newly married husband and has decided he loves the main character and wants to live with him.
Throughout the book there is reference to the author's first book, a modern take on the Odyssey and also references to a second book on a Robinson Crusoe kind of theme which he hopes will be a success but keeps getting rejected. He realizes rather than having a serious, admirable hero he needs to explore one who is less than perfect.
It was an okay read but I am surprised it was considered worthy of a Pulitzer Prize. Maybe it just struck a nerve with people today... the idea of what is love, what is it worth, what does it take to be worthy, can one live without love in your life.
Monday, 2 July 2018
The Death of Mrs Westaway
by Ruth Ware
This is another mystery book that has been getting a lot of acclaim and I have to say it is well deserved. Unlike McLaughlin's book which was plodding and uninteresting this one is an interesting, well written story with a well developed character we care about.
The story is about a young woman, around 18, whose mother was killed by a hit and run driver, leaving her destitute. She is deeply in debt, eaking out a living as a tarot card reader at an English seafront. She is threatened by a thug from a loan shark and is terrified about what will happen to her.
She receives a letter from a lawyer telling her that her grandmother has died and named her in her will. The girl only really knew her mother, nothing of any other family, so she is shocked to hear this news. When she looks at the details of the name of the beneficiary she thinks the lawyer has found the wrong person but she decides to go to the funeral and pretend to be the granddaughter to get some money, hopefully enough to get her out of debt.
She is totally shocked to find that she is the major beneficiary of the estate including the family home. The woman's son's are shocked at this news but as they had not had a good relationship with their mother they seem quite accepting of the will. The girl learns that there were two women with the same name living at the house in the past, the woman's daughter and a niece.
The girl evenutally confesses that she is not the woman's granddaughter, but it later turns out that her mother was not who she said she was. As the story develops the girls life is threatened and she finds out that it was one of her family (her own father) who killed her mother to hide the truth.
This was a well written story, it kept my interest throughout. This was a refreshing read after the McLaughlin book. This author knows how to write good description, dialogue and build suspense.
This is another mystery book that has been getting a lot of acclaim and I have to say it is well deserved. Unlike McLaughlin's book which was plodding and uninteresting this one is an interesting, well written story with a well developed character we care about.
The story is about a young woman, around 18, whose mother was killed by a hit and run driver, leaving her destitute. She is deeply in debt, eaking out a living as a tarot card reader at an English seafront. She is threatened by a thug from a loan shark and is terrified about what will happen to her.
She receives a letter from a lawyer telling her that her grandmother has died and named her in her will. The girl only really knew her mother, nothing of any other family, so she is shocked to hear this news. When she looks at the details of the name of the beneficiary she thinks the lawyer has found the wrong person but she decides to go to the funeral and pretend to be the granddaughter to get some money, hopefully enough to get her out of debt.
She is totally shocked to find that she is the major beneficiary of the estate including the family home. The woman's son's are shocked at this news but as they had not had a good relationship with their mother they seem quite accepting of the will. The girl learns that there were two women with the same name living at the house in the past, the woman's daughter and a niece.
The girl evenutally confesses that she is not the woman's granddaughter, but it later turns out that her mother was not who she said she was. As the story develops the girls life is threatened and she finds out that it was one of her family (her own father) who killed her mother to hide the truth.
This was a well written story, it kept my interest throughout. This was a refreshing read after the McLaughlin book. This author knows how to write good description, dialogue and build suspense.
Full Disclosure
by Beverly McLaughlin
This is a crime/mystery book by the former Chief Justice of the Canadian Supreme Court. It has received much praise.
I read the book but have to say I wasn't much taken by it. It was written in first person narrative which I find too one-sided and uncreative. It is about a defense lawyer from a small law firm who takes on a case people warn her against. A rich man is accused of murdering his wife in their home with what appears to be his own gun.
The book was very he said this they did that, etc. etc. It does have a surprise ending when despite the odds the lawyer is able to clear the client (who ends up being her father).
That is about all I will say about it. It was an okay read, a quick read, but not memorable.
This is a crime/mystery book by the former Chief Justice of the Canadian Supreme Court. It has received much praise.
I read the book but have to say I wasn't much taken by it. It was written in first person narrative which I find too one-sided and uncreative. It is about a defense lawyer from a small law firm who takes on a case people warn her against. A rich man is accused of murdering his wife in their home with what appears to be his own gun.
The book was very he said this they did that, etc. etc. It does have a surprise ending when despite the odds the lawyer is able to clear the client (who ends up being her father).
That is about all I will say about it. It was an okay read, a quick read, but not memorable.
Love and Ruin
by Paula McLain
This book is by the author of The Paris Wife (which I think I liked) and Circling the Sun (which I hated).
It is the story of the life of Martha Gellhorn, an American woman who became a celebrated war correspodent and author. It takes place over the years that Gellhorn met Ernest Hemmingway, travelled in Spain with him during the Civil War, became his mistress and eventually his wife for five years.
It was a beautifully written, powerful story. She did a great job of depicting Gellhorn's experiences in wartime, how Hemmingway woed her, their few years of happiness together, before his ego and neediness seemed to doom the marriage.
It very skillfully portrayed the good times and the bad times, and did a superb job of showing how Hemmingway admired and then resented her independence. He liked here when she was succeeding but needed to be the centre of attention and the centre of her world. She also demonstrated the struggle Gellhorn had trying to live under the shadow of Hemmingway as an author. Hemmingway did help her and support her at times but he also seemed to drain her of her strength to write. The author does a wonderful job of portraying the wonderful life they built for themselves in Cuba and the affection Gellhorn felt for Hemmingway's sons.
The book portrays Hemmingway as very controlling, vindictive and moody.
I enjoyed this book very much and was sorry when it came to an end.
This book is by the author of The Paris Wife (which I think I liked) and Circling the Sun (which I hated).
It is the story of the life of Martha Gellhorn, an American woman who became a celebrated war correspodent and author. It takes place over the years that Gellhorn met Ernest Hemmingway, travelled in Spain with him during the Civil War, became his mistress and eventually his wife for five years.
It was a beautifully written, powerful story. She did a great job of depicting Gellhorn's experiences in wartime, how Hemmingway woed her, their few years of happiness together, before his ego and neediness seemed to doom the marriage.
It very skillfully portrayed the good times and the bad times, and did a superb job of showing how Hemmingway admired and then resented her independence. He liked here when she was succeeding but needed to be the centre of attention and the centre of her world. She also demonstrated the struggle Gellhorn had trying to live under the shadow of Hemmingway as an author. Hemmingway did help her and support her at times but he also seemed to drain her of her strength to write. The author does a wonderful job of portraying the wonderful life they built for themselves in Cuba and the affection Gellhorn felt for Hemmingway's sons.
The book portrays Hemmingway as very controlling, vindictive and moody.
I enjoyed this book very much and was sorry when it came to an end.
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