August 2003 Archives

At its simplest, this is a tale of two girls, who become friends and grow up in London during the first two decades fo the 20th century. Overlying this simple story is the emergence of women's suffrage, and the slow but steady social changes between the death of Queen Victoria and the upheavals of World War I.

The action revolves around a fictional graveyard in North London, where two families have adjacent plots, and where the girls themselves meet, and then befriend a young grave digger, whose contributions to the narrative provide an insight into how the metropolitain world worked at the start of the 20 century.

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Enjoyable novel set in the last decades of empire. Written from the perspective of a semi-anglicised Indian and his Anglo-Indian adopted son, the story takes you from India to China and on to Borneo. Not a great deal of action, but the story covers a lot of ground, emotionally, historically and geographically.

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My first encounter with Kunal Basu, and a good bank holiday read about persian artists in the indian kingdoms of the 16th century. It's not going to be to everyone's taste, but I enjoyed the mix of history, art, culture and politics in an exotic setting. The inclusion of a few minatures by way of illustation/example would have enhanced the novel for the non-art historians amongst us!

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Another collection of short stories spanning the 18th to 20th centuries, set mainly in North America, but with the glory explorer days of the British Empire as its starting point.

I really enjoy the way Andrea Barrett gives you a glimpse into her characters' worlds, and then leaves them there... but then in subsequent stories, about apparently unconnected people, she provides sideways glances at the paths their lives then followed.

This collection starts off with maps and mapping, exploration and discovery and ends up with health and social history. Fascinating, and engaging.

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Selected as the light-weight option in today's 5 book haul from the newly reopened Battersea Library, this chick-lit (not quite that, but it's the closest pigeon hole) novel didn't even last 24 hours - it was that gripping.

It took a while to get going, but once the lead character, Ana, is in London things step up a gear and it's a page-turner, roller-coaster of discovery from there on in. And a great, neat, tear jerker of an ending.

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