Cary / Kitty’s and Olivia’s lives intersect on the small Greek island which is home to Olivia and her family. Cary’s left an unhappy marriage behind and her friendship with Olivia (and envy of her happiness) soon leads her to try to escape her ill-fated childhood too.
A semi-ghost story.
Author’s webpage: The Potter’s House – Rosie Thomas
The fall of the iron curtain and the lives that ensue for a collection of Eastern European Comenians.
Strange reading in Pokhara and Kathmandu.
Publisher’s webpage: A Desert in Bohemia – Jill Paton Walsh
Too big to finish before I head off to Nepal. And too big to take with me.
If I’d been gripped, then perhaps I would have made time to finish it, or made space in my hand baggage.
I’ve got to the end of the first section, and twenty something California graduate Pip with her complicated family, odd ball flatmates and dead end job is interesting enough, but rather too familiar from TV.
Publisher page: Purity – Jonathan Franzen
Sarah Scott sets about making a new life in Workington, Cumbria. But from the start the involvement of The Man and then his colleague, The Woman, in this process make it clear that major events in Sarah’s history are being hidden.
As the story slowly reveals the reasons behind this secrecy and subterfuge, I realised nothing about either Sarah Scott or Tara Fraser is as it first appears.
And at the end, the person I felt most sympathy for was Mrs Armstrong; the only character who was honest about her own emotions and motivations, and the nature of friendship.
Two sides of an affair; two sets of families and friends.
I didn’t enjoy the first story-side – perhaps I wasn’t meant to find Paul a likeable character (which I didn’t). For me, Cora was more interesting, and sympathetic.
Publisher’s page: The London Train – Tessa Hadley