The intertwined stories of Lena and Anton. Set in Austria in the first few decades of the 20th Century. Slow and thoughtful, it left me feeling quite sad at the end.
Author page: Snow Country – Sebastian Faulks
The intertwined stories of Lena and Anton. Set in Austria in the first few decades of the 20th Century. Slow and thoughtful, it left me feeling quite sad at the end.
Author page: Snow Country – Sebastian Faulks
Pride and Prejudice transplanted and updated to 21st Century Cincinnati.
Elizabeth become Liz, a writer on a glossy magazine and living in New York. Darcy is a heart surgeon. Mr and Mrs Bennet are both awful. Lydia and Kitty gain redemptive qualities. Mary remains the oddball, Jane the yogic angel, and Chip Bingley brings in the reality TV show and plotline that gives the novel its name.
Sparky dialogue, very short chapters, easy reading.
Author page: Eligible – Curtis Sittenfeld
A poignant page turner primarily set during World War II and following the lives of Marie-Laure, a blind French girl, and Werner, a German orphan boy.
One of the things that struck me was that characters who lived through World War II (and before it) were “normal” working people in 1974…. Not the “normal”ness, but the fact they were only in their 50s when I was small. I’d never really thought about the long tail of WW2 in that way before.
Author page: All The Light We Cannot See – Anthony Doerr
As I say in my weeknotes, I’m at a loss as to how to describe this novella. But I read it all in one go.
Publisher page: Small Things Like These – Claire Keegan
Back to 1st Century AD Rome and some Flavia Albia sleuthing, this time into an unpaid bar bill which soon develops into a much more complicated case.
I found it hard keeping track of all the characters in the two warring families, partly because there are a lot of them but mainly because of how Roman personal names work; siblings and parents / children all share some of the same names.
Author page: Fatal Legacy – Lindsey Davis