The Bone Season

The Bone Season is the debut novel by Samantha Shannon, the first in a projected series of seven novels. Shannon imagines a whole new world, set in the not too distant future, where clairvoyants are considered unnaturals and held in prisons in London. Underground crime syndicates have formed with mime-lords who have all categories of clairvoyants working for them.

In this world we meet Paige Mahoney, the heroine of The Bone Season. Shannon has created a new language full of so much slang and terms unfamiliar to me, that at first I was tempted to just put the book down. She wisely includes a glossary in the back of the book, and after plodding through it for a while, things started to make more sense and I stuck with the book.

I'm glad I did. Although the ending was unsatisfying, as any book with a sequel in the works tends to be, the world that Shannon has imagined is fascinating, if a bit dark. The book could have used a better editor, and it wasn't always the best writing, however, I look forward to reading more from this imaginative, young new writer.

Bertie Plays the Blues

Bertie Plays the Blues is a novel by Alexander McCall Smith, one of his 44 Scotland Street novels set in Edinburgh. I'm more familiar with The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, but with his usual charm and wit, this novel was a pure joy to read.

It is amazing to me how McCall Smith can create so many wonderful characters and write about them over and over in a way that doesn't get boring. The novel is funny and insightful, and at the heart of it is 7 year old Bertie, who puts himself up for adoption on eBay, so he can quit going to Italian classes and psychotherapy, and just be a boy!

A wonderful read.

The Lost Dog

The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser started out very promising. I was drawn in right away by her writing style.

However, I never really cared about any of the characters. The only one I cared about was the dog, and we never even learned his name. There were mysteries unfolding throughout the book that never got resolved, and I was left feeling hugely frustrated.

De Kretser is a Sri Lankan author living in Australia. I loved her descriptions of Melbourne, and India. She is a talented writer, but not a very good storyteller.

I wanted to love this book, but I barely made it through the whole thing; it is one of the most disappointing novels I have ever read.

The Radiance of Tomorrow

The Radiance of Tomorrow is a novel by Ishmael Beah, author of A Long Way Gone, Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. In this book, he writes of life in Sierra Leone after the civil war.

A few village Elders, and others who have managed to survive the war, slowly return to what is left of their hometown of Imperi, to try to rebuild a life for themselves. They are met by obstacles every step of the way, the worst of which is a foreign mining company that comes to the area, pollutes their water and displaces what is left of the town.

This is one of the most heartbreaking and beautiful novels I have ever read. Beah is a poet, his language soars off the page into the readers heart. This is not a novel that will soon be forgotten, He has created images that will stay with me forever.

A painful, yet brilliant novel; a story of finding hope in the most unlikely of places. Highly recommended.

And the Dark Sacred Night

And the Dark Sacred Night by Julia Glass, author of Three Junes, brings back characters we first met in her earlier books.

Here we read about Kit Noonan, a father in his early 40's at a crossroads in his life. Having just lost his job, and struggling with his marriage, his wife forces him to look for his unknown father, believing that you can never really know who you are if you dont know where you came from.

This sets Kit on a journey to his adopted father's home who he hasn't seen in years, and from there, to visit grandparents he didn't know he had.

Glass writes with great emotional insight, and makes the reader question what it really means to be a family. The characters are fully drawn and I cared about what would happen to each of them. A deeply compelling novel.

The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope

The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope is the debut novel by Rhonda Riley. It is the story of Evelyn, a young girl alone on a farm in rural North Carolina during WWII who finds what she thinks is a wounded soldier on her land. She quickly discovers that this is no soldier, and with a remarkable ability to recover, she is not sure who, or what, it is.

Thus begins the story of Adam Hope. With a complete suspension of disbelief, the reader can disappear into this world that Riley has created.

Although I liked the characters of Evelyn and Adam, and later their daughters, I was never fully able to believe in the story; and if it was "enchanted" then I was waiting for something even more magical to happen.

Riley begs the question, do we ever really know the one we love? The writing was beautiful, and overall it was a compelling and original story, but I was disappointed by the ending.

An Unnecessary Woman

An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine is a novel about Aaliya, a reclusive Beiruti woman in her seventies whose life revolves around her books and the translations that she does in her small apartment.

Nothing much happens in this novel, yet we are privileged to see the inner workings of Aaliya's mind, her thoughts at this late stage in her life, as she moves back and forth through time reliving memories of past days. There are moments of wisdom and moments of regret, everything informed by her vast knowledge of literature.

Its a joy to read a book that is a love story to great literature and poetry.. However, I was very aware that I was reading a man writing as a woman, and I wondered why the author made this choice. Still, a beautifully written novel, a worthwhile read.

The Thing Around Your Neck

The Thing Around Your Neck is a collection of short stories by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi. I've mentioned before in this blog that I'm not a big fan of short stories, however this collection is well worth reading.

Though the stories are not related, as a whole they paint a picture of the immigrant experience of Nigerian women in America. Adichi's writing is brilliant, and seemingly effortless; every story pulled me in and I cared for each of the characters in these stories.

From the violence in Nigeria, to the loneliness and longing of immigrants in America, this collection is full of sorrow and hope, tragedy and beauty. Highly recommended.

The Gravity of Birds

The Gravity of Birds is the debut novel by Tracy Guzeman. Guzeman writes about the Kessler sisters, Alice and Natalie, whose lives change forever the summer they are 14 and 17 years old and meet 28 year old painter Thomas Bayber who later becomes very famous and reclusive.

Bayber paints a portrait of the sisters that summer, that he only shows to two art collectors when he is 70 years old. He asks that the sisters be found before the painting is sold, as they have the two missing panels. Here the search begins to piece together the story of what happened all those years ago, and what Bayber is really searching for.

The story unfolds in many layers from different viewpoints, and the characters grow and deepen in the process. I had to keep reading to find out what would happen, but also for the pure joy of reading Guzeman's writing. The image of birds plays a big part in the story as the title suggests, but there are so many unexpected secrets lurking in dark corners, it kept me fully engaged and interested until the end.