From cover to cover

In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

2009-05-15T21:05:00.000+02:00

By Alexander McCall-Smith

High Hopes

2008-11-10T22:49:00.000+01:00

By Billy Hopkins

Two Caravans

2008-09-23T22:48:00.001+02:00

By Marina Lewycka

The Mermaid Chair

2008-08-18T22:36:00.000+02:00

By Sue Monk Kidd

Our Kid

2008-06-20T22:16:00.000+02:00

By Billy Hopkins

Falling Angels

2008-03-25T21:23:00.001+01:00

By Tracy Chevalier

Her Father's House

2008-02-23T23:03:00.001+01:00

By Belva Plain

To Fear a Painted Devil

2008-02-12T22:40:00.000+01:00

By Ruth Rendell

The Coffee Trader

2008-01-23T22:13:00.000+01:00

By David Liss

The Full Cupboard of Life

2008-01-15T22:14:00.000+01:00

By Alexander McCall-Smith

The Water's Lovely

2007-12-10T23:35:00.000+01:00

By Ruth Rendell

All He Ever Wanted

2007-11-27T22:09:00.000+01:00

By Anita Shreve

Nicholas Van Tassel met the woman of his dreams during a hotel fire in the winter of 1899. For Nicolas, it was love at first sight, and from that moment on, Etna Bliss was all he ever wanted. In fact, he is so overwhelmed by the sight of her that he rebuilds his life around a single goal: to marry Etna Bliss. From that moment, he pursued Etna Bliss with the solitary goal of marriage on his mind. Their courtship proves difficult, as Etna does not return his love. A proud and orderly man, Van Tassel is ill equipped to deal with the ferocity of love.

The book is written as a journal of Nicholas’s life, narrated through an essay he writes thirty years later, and is spanning three decades from 1899 to 1933.

Etna proves to be a formidable mystery, but Van Tassel, who is obsessed, perseveres. They ultimately wed and have children, but Etna remains distant and impenetrable. Van Tassel suspects that she has known love before him, though he dare not ask. Instead, he lets his jealousy fester.

Driven by domestic and professional ambitions, Nicholas takes a series of small steps that eventually lead to some giant moral lapses, and finally a monstrous plot of deception to win back his wife and ascend to the dean's office.

On Chesil Beach

2007-10-18T22:01:00.000+02:00

By Ian McEwan

A Thousand Splendid Suns

2007-10-10T21:59:00.000+02:00

By Khaled Hosseini

The Kalahari Typing School for Men

2007-09-14T22:57:00.000+02:00

By Alexander McCall Smith

Girls of Riyadh

2007-08-19T22:59:00.001+02:00

By Rajaa Alsanea

The Blood Doctor

2007-08-10T21:08:00.001+02:00

By Barbara Vine

Lord Martin Nanther is about to lose his inherited peerage as sweeping changes hit the House of Lords when the life and hereditary peers must decide their fates and dissolve the livelihoods of many. Martin needs the income from his attendance yet his conscience tells him to vote for his own removal from office.

Lord Nanther is not only a hereditary peer but also known for his well written biographies, he now intends to research his great-grandfather, Dr Henry Nanther. Fascinated with blood diseases, he was a 19th-century expert in bleeding disorders and, when Queen Victoria's eighth child, Leopold, was diagnosed as a haemophiliac (“a bleeder”), Henry was appointed physician to the royal household. He was later knighted by Queen Victoria for work with her haemophiliac children.

The sufferers of haemophilia are male. Women carry the gene silently, realising their inheritance only when they give birth to an affected boy, who need not be their first son. By then they may have had daughters, some of whom will, in turn, pass the mutation to their children.

Today, 120 years later, Martin reads his relative’s letters, notebooks and scientific works and learns of distant cousins he never knew. Among the mysteries Nanther must clear up is why the incidence of haemophilia in his own family -- an American cousin has it -- increased after 48-year-old Sir Henry bought off a long-time mistress, jilted a desirable woman and became engaged to one both less attractive and less respectable and then, when she was strangled on a train trip, married her sister.

At the same time, Martin’s second wife, Jude, is desperate for a child and hopes he might come upon some reason to explain her inability to carry a child even though he has a son from his former marriage. In the end the doctors find evidence of a biological mismatch between the couple causing Jude to repeatedly miscarry every time she gets pregnant.

Toward the end of Sir Henry's life, Nanther learns that the queen's esteemed adviser on haemophilia began to act crazily out of character. After a lifetime of emotional aridity, Sir Henry found both love and tears of grief as his brilliant and gentle-natured young son, George, lay dying of haemophilia. When Martin uncovers the truth behind his great-grandfather’s actions, he ceases his research for the truth is indeed chilling.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

2007-08-07T19:21:00.000+02:00

By J.K. Rowling

The fifth Harry Potter book picks up only four weeks after Harry’s bitter-sweet triumph over Voldemort in The Goblet of Fire. It is a must-read for any fan but for some reason I thought the storyline was weaker than in the previous four books, with the fourth being my favourite to date. Somehow I just could not get totally engrossed in the story, there was something missing. Maybe it has been to long since I read the fourth book, and the Harry Potter fascination has died down since then…?

In this book the youngsters begin to piece together the purpose of The Order of the Phoenix. It is a story about the struggle between good and evil as well as the story of Harry's coming of age - with many twists and turns unexpected to the reader. In between magical missions and battles, Harry spends his school days learning to relate to a girlfriend, handling his own pride when Ron begins to gain special honours, and finding out who he is apart from Quidditch, his parents and the professors who have guided him all his wizarding life.

The story ends with a stunning, full revelation of a heretofore half-expressed prophecy. And Harry returns to Privet Drive with assurances that The Order of the Phoenix will be watching over him during holiday.

Icebound

2007-05-08T23:08:00.000+02:00

By Dean Koontz

Scientists in Russia learned that the water constituting the icecaps have much lower bacteria than any water. American scientists, Drs. Harold and Rita Carpenter gathered a team of four colleagues to learn more about the discovery. An underwater earthquake breaks apart the iceberg which the six scientists are on, and they are stranded on the now detached chunk of ice.

Their biggest problem is that they have to get off the iceberg before midnight because they had planted 12 explosives in the ice, but because the ice is now detached they cannot get off. The team is set adrift on the section with the explosives. While trying to figure out a way off the iceberg in the middle of a huge storm, they discover that one of their own is a psychopath and that there is a cold blooded murderer in their midst, as someone among them has tried to kill a fellow scientist.

Their only hope of rescue is a Russian submarine just miles away. As they make desperate plans with the Russians to escape the iceberg they must also try to discover who the killer is, before attempting their risky rescue.

Not the most interesting Dean Koontz novel.

A Walk To Remember

2007-03-26T21:50:00.000+02:00

By Nicholas Sparks

This is a really lovely and beautiful love story, of love that is ever-lasting.

Landon Carter is a rich, handsome and popular with just about everyone at his high school in Beaufort, North Carolina. Jamie Sullivan is a sensitive outcast, misunderstood, unpopular, lonely and shy. Raised by a poor southern Baptist reverend and overlooked by everyone.

When Landon has to decide to take Chemistry or Drama, he signs up for Drama. He ends up with the leading role in the spring play in which Jamie ends up with the female leading role. The Homecoming Dance is getting closer and Landon, just having broken up with his girlfriend, has no date for the dance. An interesting sequence of events causes Landon to ask Jamie to the dance, upon which Jamie tells Landon not to fall in love with her, something he thinks he will have no problem with.

After seeing Jamie on the stage, Landon realises he has fallen head over heels for her. Not long after Jamie reveals that she has leukaemia and is going to die. This news both devastated and scares Landon. He spends as much time with her as he can and they both fall in love with each other. Their love continues to grow as they struggle with their own feelings and the reality of disease.

Jamie tells Landon that she wants to be married before she dies and Landon surprises her by proposing to her, and she accepts. Landon learns what life is really about and even after Jamie’s death; he is still very much in love with her.

Velocity

2007-03-17T19:59:00.000+01:00

By Dean Koontz

“If you don’t take this note to the police and get them involved, I will kill a lovely blond schoolteacher. If you do take this note to the police, I will instead kill an elderly woman active in charity work. You have four hours to decide. The choice is yours.”

This is the note that Billy Wile, a hardworking bartender who leads a quiet, ordinary life in a small California town, finds under his windshield wiper one night after work. Billy takes the note Lanny Olson, a friend on the police force, who advices Billy to go home and forget about it; both deciding it is a sick joke.

Less than twenty-four hours later, a young blond schoolteacher is found murdered and Billy he realises that his indecision has caused a woman to be killed, since he didn’t convince the police to get involved.

The next day he gets a second note with another deadline and another ultimatum. This time giving him even less time to decide his choices. Suddenly Billy’s average, seemingly innocuous life takes on the dimensions and speed of an accelerating nightmare as the notes are coming faster, the deadlines growing tighter and the killer becoming bolder; he even murders a man in Billy’s bathroom as a clueless Billy sits in a rocking chair out on the porch.

Billy’s life takes on nightmarish overtones when he is captured and tortured by the madman. He is told that the death of the final victim will lead him to commit suicide.

The only person who gives his life meaning is his comatose fiancée, Barbara. Several weeks before their marriage, she developed botulism poisoning and has been in a coma for the last four years. Now Billy has the task of making sure that he is not framed for the various murders and the task of keeping Barbara safe. Billy must carefully analyse who might be the psycho murderer and his reasons.

The plot is well thought-out and executed, though the ending is a little far fetched; a very good novel that keeps you on your toes.

Good Wives

2007-03-03T22:34:00.000+01:00

By Louisa May Alcott

This is the sequel to Little Women, and much better it was too. In this book we continue to follow the adventures of the four March sisters, and explore the trials and tribulations of entering into womanhood and embarking on married life. The story picks up a few months after Little Women closes and it deals with the expectations that women had to live up to, and how they were supposed to behave, in mid-nineteen century New England.

The Kite Runner

2007-02-16T19:53:00.000+01:00

By Khaled Hosseini

This is the debut novel of Khalid Hosseini, a Californian doctor who immigrated to the US as a child, together with his Afghani parents. It is apparently the first ever Afghan novel to be written in English. It is definitely one of the best novels I have read so far this year.

A wonderful and unforgettable story of the unlikely friendship between Amir, a wealthy boy who enjoys a life of privilege, and the son, Hassan, of his father's servant, living in Afghanistan in the 1960s. The story takes us from Afghanistan in the final days of the monarchy to the atrocities of the present, which gives an interesting insight into the devastating history of Afghanistan over the last thirty years.

Amir lives in constant want of his father's attention, feeling that he is a failure in his father's eyes. Hassan, on the other hand, seems to be able to do no wrong. Striving to be the son his father always wanted, Amir places the fate of his relationship with his father on the outcome of a kite running tournament, a popular challenge in which participants must cut down the kites of others with their own kite. In the end Amir wins the tournament. However, it does not take long before a tragedy occurs with his friend Hassan in a back alley on the very streets where the boys once played. This moment marks a turning point in Amir's life, one whose memory he seeks to bury by moving to America.

In America Amir realizes his dream of becoming a writer and marries for love, but the memory of that fateful day in the alley will prove too strong to forget. After spending years in California, Amir returns to his homeland in Afghanistan to help his old friend Hassan, whose son is in trouble. For Amir time has come to right the wrongs that began that day and continued in the days, months and years that followed.

Little Women

2007-02-06T21:41:00.000+01:00

By Louisa May Alcott

The four March-sisters, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, live in a small house together with their mother and maid, Hannah. Their dad is a clergyman and is away doing his bit for the war effort in the American Civil War. The family is poor but respected. Their next door neighbour is wealthy Mr Lawrence and his orphaned grandson, Laurie, who is soon befriended by the March sisters.

The book sees the sisters and Laurie get into all sorts of difficulties which they generally triumph over. Meg falls in love with Laurie’s tutor, John Brooke. Laurie on the other hand is secretly in love with Jo. Near the end of the story Beth gets very sick, something that brings the family closer.

Not the most exciting story, I am afraid to say. I was a little disappointed with the story especially since I have heard so much about this book, being one the great classics. Maybe my expectations were just too high.

Light On Snow

2007-01-18T22:17:00.000+01:00

By Anita Shreve

Before Christmas nineteen years ago, Nicky Dillon and her father, Robert, are snowshoeing in the woods when they find an abandoned baby girl in the snow. They rush her to the hospital and her life is saved. Subsequently, the police begin an investigation to locate the mother of the baby.

Three years prior, Nicky's mother and baby sister, Clara, were killed in a car accident. This caused Robert to withdraw from the world and with only a few personal possessions move with his eldest daughter from Westchester, New York to settle in a remote area of New Hampshire. The farmhouse they live in is isolated from an intrusive world, with no television or newspaper, and located at the end of a long, badly rutted road. Nicky goes to school, reads, knits and makes bead jewellery and her father makes furniture, which he sells to the very few costumers who make their way to the house.

A week or so after they find the baby, a young woman, Charlotte, comes to the house claiming to be a customer for Robert's furniture, but soon confesses that she is the mother of the baby. A blizzard traps Charlotte in the house and gradually we learn the truth behind the horrifying discovery in the snow. Simultaneously, in a series of flashbacks, we also become acquainted with the Dillon family, before and after the death of Nicky’s mother and sister.

Nicky, longing for a woman to confide in, quickly bonds with Charlotte. For Nicky it is an emotional connection she has not experienced since her mother died. Their relationship is a complicated blend of mother/friend, where Nicky is torn between concern for Charlotte and the knowledge of what the young woman has done. With Charlotte as their silent witness, Robert and Nicky must also confront their long months of loss and grief.

It is a touching story of three people tormented by grief and loss, and of how they come to terms with the tragedy they left behind, but also a story about the power of forgiveness.

The Autograph Man

2006-12-06T22:37:00.000+01:00

By Zadie Smith

The Autograph Man is the second novel from Zadie Smith but unfortunately not half as good as the first one. Maybe I have no sense of humour but I did not find this novel funny at all. However, I have a feeling the author has had a lot of fun while writing it, somehow…

Alex-Li Tandem lives in the unremarkable London suburb of Mountjoy, where most of the novel takes place. Mountjoy is a fictional suburb in the flight path of an international airport at the northernmost tip of London. Alex-Li is 27, half-Jewish, half-Chinese, celebrity obsessed and makes his living collecting and selling autographs, and occasionally faking them - all to give the people a little piece of fame. For a very long time he has been seeking the autograph of Kitty Alexander, a reclusive 1950s B movie actress and whose autograph is particularly valuable because she gave it out so rarely. Every week for 13 years he has been writing to her, without a single reply, hoping she will send him his autograph.

Alex-Li’s best friends are a weed-smoking black Jew, Adam, born in America but living in London since childhood. His sister, Esther, is Alex-Li’s girlfriend. Rubinfine, boyhood pal turned rabbi and Joseph, the mysterious, oddly wise eternal nerd. He also mixed with a pack of low-level autograph dealers with whom he haunts an auction house and a nearby pub. In the evenings he gets high with Adam, who has discovered God through the combined powers of marijuana and the Kabbalah.

Miraculously, Alex comes into possession of one Kitty Alexander’s autographs, which prompts him to leave London and fly to Brooklyn, where Kitty lives. There he visits a large autograph collectors’ fair, Autographicana Fair, and hooks up with a bunch of suspicious characters, including an African-American woman with a germ phobia named Honey (who is best known for a celebrity blow job a few years ago…), and tries at last to meet his dream woman.

Annie Dunne

2006-10-13T23:26:00.000+02:00

By Sebastian Barry

There was so much about this book that I did not like, like the almost prose-like style it is written in. The author elaborates on the simplest little thoughts of the main characters which can be a good thing but for this novel it just did not work. There were interesting bits in between, and that is what kept me reading, but there were pages and pages in between that contained nothing of value to the story and which caused me to lose interest in the story all together. It is a novel where nothing happens many times over.

Annie Dunne is an unmarried woman in her sixties who live and work on a small farm in a remote and beautiful part of Wicklow, Ireland, with her cousin Sarah. In the summer of 1959 they are asked to care for their grand-niece and grand-nephew whose parents are going to England to look for work.

Unfortunately for the reader, nothing much happens except for copious descriptions of the daily agricultural round, the introduction of farm labourer Billy Kerr, with his ambiguous attentions to Sarah, and some hints about possible child sexual abuse. The latter is, however, abandoned unresolved, as if the author could not be bothered to do anything more with it.

A Gathering Light

2006-09-08T10:57:00.000+02:00

By Jennifer Donnelly

“When summer comes to the North Woods, time slows down. And some days it stops altogether. The sky, grey and lowering for much of the year, becomes an ocean of blue, so vast and brilliant you can’t help but stop what you’re doing—pinning wet sheets to the line maybe, or shucking a bushel of corn on the back steps—to stare up at it. Locusts whir in the birches, coaxing you out of the sun and under the boughs, and the heat stills the air, heavy and sweet with the scent of balsam.”

It took me a while to like this book. The first few chapters were dragging and I almost felt like giving up but, for some reason, I stuck to the story and it paid off big time in the end. It is a book about race, class, wealth and poverty, and also about prejudice and the power of words.

The story is based on the real-life murder of Grace Brown, which took place at turn of the last century. Seventeen-year-old Mattie Gokey, who is torn between her desire to be a writer and the excitement of her first romance, is spending the summer of 1906 away from home working the busy holiday season at the Glenmore hotel, the finest hotel on all of Big Moose Lake. The money she is earning will help her family maintain their run-down far, and she is also saving up to set up home with her fiancé.

One day a young woman is found drowned in the nearby lake. She gives Mattie a bundle of letters which Mattie must promise to burn. Instead she begins to read Grace Brown’s letters, revealing the secret behind the circumstances of her death. Mattie’s own dilemmas and choices are quietly reflected in the life of Grace Brown and her tale merges with Mattie’s own story, giving her the courage to define her own future.

Thirteen Steps Down

2006-08-12T14:40:00.000+02:00

By Ruth Rendell

This is another brilliant novel from the pen (or keyboard) of Ruth Rendell. A violent tale of fantasy lives, hatred, obsession, superstition, guilt and murder. It was so good I did not want to put it down. The only let down is that the ending is quite straightforward and not the usual Ruth Rendell ending with a twist.

St Blaise House, Notting Hill, London. When Michael “Mix” Cellini’s job brings him to London he deliberately finds a place to live near to what was once 10 Rillington Place, which is the house where long-dead serial killer John Reginald Christie lived. Christie was a doctor who not only performed abortions 50 years ago, but also killed the women he butchered and indulged in the act of necrophilia before he buried them. Among them was his own wife. Mix is obsessed with Christie and reads every book and snippet of information about him that he can get his hands on. Mix makes his living repairing and maintaining exercise equipment for his mostly female costumers with whom he also indulges in a little extracurricular recreation.

Gwendolen Chawcer is an 80-year-old spinster and Mix's landlady. She is the owner of the neglected and crumbling old Victorian house where Mix rents the attic space. Having led a rather sheltered life she rarely goes out, preferring the company of her many hundreds of books. Gwendolen hates Mix and the feeling is mutual.

Nevertheless, there are many similarities between Gwendolen's and Mix's personalities. They are truly a pretty unpleasant pair, little deserving of any sympathy. Both are natural loners, each living in their own private fantasy world, ill-mannered and neither sees anything wrong in using others for their own convenience. However, their backgrounds and upbringings were very different. Gwendolen had an over-protected and privileged upbringing, whereas Mix grew up with a loving, but domestically inept mother, and a violent step-father.

In his meticulously clean flat, so much in contrast to the rest of the dismal, eerie old house with its crumbling wallpaper, peeling paint and very out-of-date appliances, Mix divides his time between reading about Christie and inventing wild fantasies involving himself and Nerissa Nash, whose portrait takes pride of place on the living room wall.

Nerissa Nash is a supermodel who lives in the neighbourhood, and is as sweet and as she is naïve. Mix has a crush on Nerissa and so he begins to stalk her, secretly planning their 'future' together. In fact, Mix’s obsession with Nerissa pushes him over the line from a very neurotic young man to a dangerous psychopath.

Mix is superstitious and troubled by the number 13. There are thirteen stairs to climb between his landlady's part of the house and his own flat on the third floor and Nerissa's house number is also thirteen.

After following Nerissa to Shoshana’s Spa, a spa and fitness centre owned by the phoney and sadistic "psychic" Madame Shoshanna, Mix meets and starts dating the receptionist, Danila. When Danila speaks badly about Nerissa, Mix beats her to death in his flat and hides her body under the floorboards in one of the attic rooms.

Gwendolen has never been married. Her life was determined and controlled by her overbearing father, who lived to the ripe-old age of 94, thus never giving his daughter a chance to meet men. Despite her isolation and naiveté Gwendolen fell in love with the young doctor, Stephen Reeves, who cared for her father. But once her father died, she never heard from him again. However, when she reads the Daily Telegraph's announcement of the death of Stephen Reeves' wife, Eileen, fifty years later, she sets about trying to track him down.

The Dearly Departed

2006-08-03T10:47:00.000+02:00

By Elinor Lipman

Hmmm… I do not know where to start with this one… I found the story very confusing with too many characters and a storyline that skipped from here to there in no time. It is not hilarious and funny, like some reviews have stated, but there are bits and pieces that will make you smile. On the positive side, it is an easy and quick read, it is entertaining although not very memorable, unfortunately.

The story begins when Sunny Batten returns to the small town of King George, New Hampshire, and to the ramshackle grey bungalow on the edge of the country club’s golf course where her mother, Margaret Batten, raised Sunny by herself. Her mother has just died of carbon monoxide poisoning in a freak accident with Margaret’s alleged fiancé, Miles Finn. While at the funeral, Sunny catches her first glimpse of Miles Finn’s son, Fletcher, and as Sunny and Fletcher sit together at the graveside it is difficult not to notice the resemblance between Sunny and Fletcher, both having the same kind of wispy, shiny, prematurely grey hair.

King George is full of surprises and for Sunny bitter memories of her childhood comes flooding back when seeing her high school golfing team mates (all boys) again. She is also embarrassed when discovering that her mother’s new midlife hobby had been acting. Home for the first time since high school, Sunny finds herself reassessing the place. She learns that her mother had blossomed from a divorced wallflower to a much-admired amateur actress in King George’s local theatre troupe, and thus the object of widespread affection. However, in spite of past grievances Sunny’s return to King George proves that one can go home again, and her grief segues into pleasant alliances with the townspeople, as Sunny becomes re-acquainted with Joey Loach, who spent most of his high school years in detention but has now become the town’s heroic police chief; Emil Ouimet, the town physician who wears his love for Margaret on his sleeve, and Randy Pope, the golf-team-captain-turned-respectable-lawyer.

In the end, all loose ends are neatly tied up and all single characters are suitably paired, and Sunny finds a possible new half-brother in Fletcher.

The Thief

2006-08-02T11:12:00.000+02:00

By Ruth Rendell

Not a typical Ruth Rendell novel. It is extremely short, only 86 pages and large print. There is no mind blowing twist at the end. The suspense lies in how the main character, Polly, will solve her problem, a problem that takes her into a world of fear and deception and which eventually destroys her wonderful, new life with boyfriend Alex.

Polly has finally found happiness with her boyfriend Alex and no longer lies or steals, like she used to in the past when she had a need to take things from the people who hurt her, like her Aunt Pauline, a girl at school and a boyfriend who left. Alex, on the other hand, loves her and so he trusts her and believes her.

On the way to New York she is alone, and once confronted with an unpleasant situation, she reverts to her habit of stealing from those who have crossed her. She takes the luggage of Trevor Lant, a passenger on the same plane, who has been offensive and rude to her. Her first reaction is of relief and joy but she soon finds herself surrounded by fear and deception, and Trevor Lant’s revenge is only a stone throw away.

The Secret Life of Bees

2006-07-19T21:27:00.000+02:00

By Sue Monk Kidd

"There is nothing perfect," August said from the doorway. "There is only life."

It is 1964, the year of the Civil Rights Act, in a small town, Sylvan, in South Carolina. Lily Owens is a fourteen year old white girl who lives on a peach farm with her father, whom she calls T. Ray because he does not deserve to be called dad, and her black nanny, Rosaleen. Her mother, Deborah, died amid mysterious circumstances when Lily was four years old, and Lily has spent much of her life longing for her mother.

Rosaleen watches Lyndon Johnson sign the Civil Rights Act on TV. Filled with a sense of determination she heads into town to register to vote, but when she encounters three of the town's worst racists, Rosaleen ends up in jail.

Lily’s father is short-tempered and mean-spirited and has always tried to suppress Lily's chance for a bright future by discouraging her desire to read and write. To make matters worse, he tells Lily that she accidentally killed her mother. When Rosaleen is thrown in jail, Lily sees an opportunity to not only save Roseleen but also to finally escape her own father. She seizes the moment and springs Rosaleen from jail and the two set out across South Carolina in search of a new life. Their destination is the town of Tiburon, which neither of them knows anything about. However, in a box of her mother's belongings there is a picture of a black Virgin Mary with the words "Tiburon, South Carolina" written on the back.

Once in Tiburon they are taken in by three black beekeeping sisters, May, June, and August, who worship the Black Madonna. It is here, surrounded by the strength of the Madonna, the hum of bees, and a circle of wise and colourful women, that Lily makes her passage to wholeness and a new life. As she learns things from her past, including the circumstances around the death of her mother at the age of four, she also learns some of life's most important lessons. On her journey of discovery, religious ideology is brought to the forefront as she come across the Daughters of Mary, a wailing wall, Catholicism intertwined with Paganism and also face to face with a Black Madonna.

At first sight, the story can seem very dismal but it is in fact a very uplifting book with Rosaleen attempting to register to vote, and the consequences of this leading Lily and Rosaleen to run away from home. This is the story of how they found love and acceptance, and how Lily finally discovers that she is not such a bad person after all. It is a story I enjoyed immensely reading.

Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction

2006-07-03T21:27:00.000+02:00

By Sue Townsend

'Dear Mr Blair,'

'You may remember me -- we met at a Norwegian Leather Industry reception at the House of Commons in 1999.'

Funny, funny, funny! An extremely easy read perfect for travelling.

The diary opens in September 2002 when Adrian Mole has reached the ripe old age of 34. However, he is still not quite connecting with the realities of life. The story starts with Adrian cancelling his holiday to Cyprus when he learns that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction that can reach Cyprus is 45 minutes. When the travel agent will not refund his deposit, he begins writing to Tony Blair telling him he needs proof of the weapons of mass destruction to show his travel agent in order to get a refund.

From there it is uphill in true Adrian Mole style. He now works in a second-hand bookshop run by an amiable old gent called Mr. Carlton-Hayes. Pandora is still in Adrian's life, of course, although not in the capacity he would choose.

In his spare time he is acting as chairman of a creative-writing group with only one other member apart from himself. During the nearly two years covered in this diary Adrian buys a home where he is locked in mortal combat with a vicious swan called Gielgud, faces financial ruin, endures the romance from hell with the ghastly Marigold, confronts the ageing of his parents, takes responsibility for a child, lets go of some long-held dreams and becomes romantically involved with Marigold’s sister, Daisy. Then, when his 17-year old son joins the army and is sent to Iraq, reality hits too close to home. Fearful for his son, we see a new empathic side of Adrian.

It is hard sometimes to know whether to laugh or cry at Adrian and the choices he makes, but for the most part it kept me smiling and chuckling, shaking my head at his lack of financial and romantic sense.

Spelling Mississippi

2006-06-08T21:39:00.000+02:00

By Marnie Woodrow

Cleo Savoy, a Canadian, is in New Orleans on holiday. One evening she is sitting alone on the dock in the French Quarter, contemplating life, when a woman in an evening gown and a rhinestone tiara leaps over Cleo’s head and into the Mississippi River.

This is the beginning of Spelling Mississippi, a love story set in New Orleans. The novel is full of romance, drama, betrayal and sex. An interesting story but which, for me, lacked that extra intensity and magic.

After seeing the woman disappear into the mighty Mississippi Cleo is consumed with worry and soon the Mississippi swimmer becomes a deep obsession. Having just witnessed what Cleo believes to be a suicide, she spends the night distraught and alone in her hotel, the Pommes Royales, replaying the scene in her mind.

Madeline, the mystery swimmer, it turns out had not intended to commit suicide. She simply leapt into the river because she needed to. It was just the remedy for her anger and her pain, when everything in her life and in her marriage appeared to be falling apart.

Cleo, on the other hand, spends the rest of her holiday seeking answers to the mystery of the Mississippi swimmer, and searches through the streets of New Orleans for Madeline.

Throughout the novel each woman’s story unfolds. They both have maternal issues: Cleo copes with abandonment, Madeline with suffocation. Cleo’s mother disappeared when she was young whereas Madeline’s mother was always too present, trying to make up for Madeline’s father leaving, something that resulted in her pushing her daughter away.

Cleo and Madeline finally come together, just to discover that they have more in common than their troubled childhoods.

Morality for Beautiful Girls

2006-05-11T18:21:00.000+02:00

By Alexander McCall Smith

The third book in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series starts with Mma Ramotswe moving her agency to new premises. The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency is losing money and has to close its office. The agency moves into a small building adjoining Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s garage and Mma Makutsi, who is eager for a promotion, takes over as acting manager of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, while she continues to work as assistant detective.

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, the owner of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, is forced by illness to temporarily leave the garage in the hands of the apprentices and Mma Makutsi. The once hard-working, generous-hearted mechanic and owner of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, who was once so enthusiastic and full of self-reproach, is depressed and in need of a rest.

While all this is going on a Government Man, convinced his new sister-in-law is out to kill his younger brother, enlists Mma Ramotswe's services. Precious sets off for the Government Man’s farm to investigate leaving the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency and Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors in the capable management of Mma Matuksi.

Not long after Mma Ramotswe has left, Mma Matuksi receives a visit from the director of a beauty pageant. He wants to make sure the winner of this year’s contest is worthwhile, and will not bring disgrace to the pageant and to Botswana like last year’s winner, who was arrested for prostitution and thus brought the beauty pageant into disrespect.

Unlike the previous books, there are only two mysteries for Mma Ramotswe to solve. The focus point of the novel is on Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s depression and Mma Makutsi’s running of his garage while he is away to rest and find new strength. In this book, some of the minor characters also get developed a bit further. It is an extremely enjoyable read and a beautifully written story.

The Da Vinci Code

2006-01-16T16:19:00.000+01:00

By Dan Brown

“When a question has no correct answer, there is only one honest response. The grey area between yes and no.”

The story starts with the murder of the Louvre curator, Jacques Saunière. He is shot in the stomach inside the Louvre Museum by an albino monk, Silas. Before he dies he manages to set up his first puzzle, and this is where main characters Robert Landon and Sophie Neveu come in. Jacques Saunière’s first puzzle is meant as a secret coded message to his granddaughter Sophie Neveu, a cryptologist and Parisian police agent. Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor and expert on religious symbology, is drawn into the murder when the Police Inspector on the case believes he is the killer. Sophie, knowing Robert is innocent, helps him escape from the Louvre. Together they embark on a quest to find the real killer.

It is a quest full of puzzles and riddles. It turns out the dead curator was a member of the Priory of Sion, which is an ancient secret society tasked with protecting the truth about Jesus Christ. This is a society which is claimed to have included Sandro Boticelli, Isaac Newton and Leonardo Da Vinci as members.

The novel is a fascinating mystery with compelling stories of Catholicism, conspiracy and insanity, also suggesting an alternative version of the Bible; that Jesus Christ was married to Mary Magdalene and a child was born of this marriage, and that Mary and her child fled after the crucifixion to Gaul, where they established the Merovingian line of European royalty.

A brilliant mystery with so many twists, it is hard not to get totally engrossed in the story. A real page turner.

Holy Fools

2005-06-23T14:12:00.000+02:00

By Joanne Harris

The story is based in fifteenth century France where a young woman, Juliette, and her young daughter, Fleur, are forced to seek refuge among the sisters of the abbey of Sainte Marie-de-la-mer. Here Juliette reinvents herself as Souer Auguste in order to escape from her past as a circus performer and to protect herself and her daughter from a man named Guy LeMerle.

After a while the old Abbess dies. This creates chaos in the monastery. An 11-year old girl, Mére Isabelle, who is the niece of a powerful bishop, is appointed the new abbess. She arrives accompanied by her advisor, Père Columbin, who is none other than LeMerle. As the two wield their evil upon the monastery, Juliette must protect herself and her daughter.

A novel of great historic details but does, unfortunately, lack a compelling storyline.

Tears of the Giraffe

2005-04-14T13:19:00.000+02:00

By Alexander McCall Smith

Like the previous book, this one is also filled with humour and makes for an entartaining read.

Precious Ramotswe is now firmly established as Botswana's first and only lady detective. She is also about to marry Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, owner of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors.

This time around Mma Ramotswe helps an American woman find out the truth about her son's disappearence in the Kalahari desert ten years ago. She also reveals the plot of Mr. Matekoni's housemaid who is planning to get rid of Precious so she can continue to meet her male “friends” at Mr. Matekoni's house during the day.

It is not only Mma Ramotswe who is searching for clues as her secretary at the Detective Agency, Mma Makutsi, receives her first case and gets promoted to Assistant Detective.

On the home front, her fiancé, Mr. Matekoni, gets talked into taking in a pair of orphans, and is of course worried how Precious is going to respond to that once she finds out. After all, they are about to be married.

Highy recommended reading.

Still Waters

2005-03-11T13:17:00.000+01:00

By Jennifer Lauck

This is the sequel to Blackbird. Jennifer is twelwe when she moves to live with her aunt and uncle in Reno. She has now been separated from her brother and does not have much contact with him until they meet at her wedding. The move to Reno is only the start of Jennifer's trials. After a while she has to move again and is being sent from caretaker to caretaker.

This books follows Jennifer during her teen years until adulthood. Like everyone, Jennifer is in search of answers. It is not until she has found some of the answers to her questions that she can let the past remain the past, and start on a prosperious future as a wife and mother, with a career in writing.

A must read if you have read Blackbird.

Blackbird

2005-02-17T13:08:00.000+01:00

By Jennifer Lauck

This is the author's childhood. Jennifer's life began happy - in Carson City, Nevada, where she lived with her parents and brother, B.J. However, like anyone of us, she does not know what lies around the next corner. After years of illness her mother dies. Her father remarries a women who belongs to a religious cult. All of a sudden young Jennifer's life changes. She is no longer the happy-go-lucky girl she used to be, but starts on a slave-like excistence that sends her to live on her own before she even is a teenager. It's a shocking, and sad, story of what happens when a series of strange cirumstances beyond your control, changes the life of an innocent child.

First and foremost a sad story but you cannot but admire someone who has come out of a childhood like that, and has made a life for herself as a grown woman. It shows that no matter what happens in our lives we have a choice as to how we choose to deal with it.

The Grenadillo Box

2005-01-28T13:05:00.000+01:00

By Janet Gleeson

The story begins in 1755 when Nathaniel Hopson, who is a journeyman to cabinetmaker Thomas Chippendale, is sent to Cambridge to fill in as a footman in the absence of regular staff. He is to install a library at the grand house of Lord Montfort. It is during dinner on New Year's Day that a gun shot is heard and Lord Montfort is found shot dead in the library. In his hands he is clutching a mysterious box – a grenadillo box.

In his pursuit to find the person who killed Lord Montfort, Nathaniel finds another body. This time it is his own friend John Partridge who has had four of his fingers brutally hacked off.

The grenadillo box, a beautifully crafted box made out of rare grenadillo wood, does of course become central in Nathaniel’s investigation of the murders. After having been deemed missing at first it is after a while recovered but the keyhole seems to be missing. I am sure I won’t give away anything by saying that they do eventually manage to open the box – and the content does hold one of the keys to the solution of the mystery. Before that, however, the plot involves everything from missing orphans to more dead bodies and a lot of people who do not want Nathaniel to find out the truth.

This is a very entertaining and interesting book, not only because of the various red herrings throw in, but also because of the historic facts the book contains. However, the story was sadly not as catching as I had hoped it would be.

The Rottweiler

2004-12-28T18:46:00.000+01:00

By Ruth Rendell

The story centers around Inez Ferry's antique shop in Marlyebone, London - a widow who lives on her late husband, Martin's, memory. After her aunt leaves her a house full of contents she decides to set up an antique shop and converts the space above the shop into flats. The flats are inhabited by an eclectic mix of people.

A series of young girls are being found murdered. The first victim had a bite mark on her neck and so the papers nicknames the killer 'The Rottweiler'. This was later proven to be a mistake, in fact he would rather not touch them at all, but the name sticks.

One of the girls is found near Inez Ferry's antique shop and several personal items stolen from the victims are discovered in the same shop. It is the murderer's habit to steal something personal from every victim. This can be anything from a lighter to jewellery. As only the employees and the tentants have access to the shop it is not a surprise that the murderer must be someone Inez Ferry knows.

I loved the way the author shares the murderer's dark thoughts into questioning why he does what he does, and why the urge to kill struck in his adult life. However, it would have been an ever better story had not the identity of the murderer been revealed so soon. It spoils the rest of the story a little bit.

As always there are a number of sub-plots to the story.

One is the story about a young disabled man named Will. He is being looked after by his Aunt Becky who he relies heavily on for most things in life. She is his only living relative and although Aunt Becky cares greatly about Will, she is longing for the freedom from her responsibilities when it comes to looking after him.

Then there is the story of a group of thieves who end up stealing a safe from the murderer's flat. This particular safe contains all of the victim's personal items and when they discover this they try to blackmail the murderer.

We also get to know Inez Ferry's shop assistant Zeinab who is consistently late for work. She's engaged to be married to two wealthy men; Morton Phibling and Rowley Woodhouse. Neither one knows of the other.

Another gripping story from the Queen of Mystery.

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

2004-12-04T20:00:00.000+01:00

By Alexander McCall Smith

This is the first novel in The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series where we get to know Mma Ramotswe. When her father dies Precious Ramotswe sells the hundred and eighty cattle she inherits and uses the money to set up Botswana's first female detective agency to "help people with problems in their lives".

Rather than just the one big mystery there are a variety of cases, which includes a missing husband, a wayward teenager daughter, a strangely behaving doctor and a boy kidnapped by witch doctors.

With lots of humour the author has managed to create a story unlike any other detective novel I have every read. My favourite book for 2004 and definitely not the last one that I will read about the many mysteries I am sure Mma Ramotswe is about to solve in the future.

The Potter's House

2004-11-22T20:29:00.000+01:00

By Rosie Thomas

This novel is set on the small Greek island of Halemni where Olivia, an Englishwoman, lives an almost idyllic existence with her husband Xan and their two young children. An earthquake ravages the Turkish coast, sending a tsunami across the island.

Kitty, another Englishwoman, on holiday in Turkey suddenly finds herself on Halemni. After her marriage crumbles Kitty's world collapses. She therefore decides to flee London for Turkey, for a break. Without any possessions Kitty accepts Olivia's offer of refuge in the potter's house.

With Olivia's help Kitty soon settles well on the island and becomes well liked by the local inhabitants. There are a number of misunderstandings between Kitty and Olivia. Their initial friendship dissolves due to these misunderstandings and Olivia's feelings of insecurity towards Kitty.

The story starts out well enough but there really is no proper ending. You end up feeling like something is missing, which I always find is very frustrating after having read the entire story ending up expecting more than I got.

How To Be Good

2004-10-29T13:16:00.000+02:00

By Nick Hornby

'Listen, I'm not a bad person. I'm a doctor. One of the reasons I wanted to become a doctor was because I thought it would be a good - as in Good rather than exciting or well-paid or glamorous - thing to do … Anyway, I'm a good person, a doctor, and I'm lying in a hotel bed with a man I don't really know very well called Stephen, and I've just asked my husband for a divorce.'

What does it mean to be good? This is Nick Hornsby trying to answer that question in his usual humorous way.

Katie and David Carr are married. Katie is Good. She recycles, she's against racism and even became a doctor to help people. However, Katie is having a mid-life crisis, not sure how she feels about her life and children. She feels is ready for a divorce and a new life. In fact, she is already having an affair with another man and ends up asking her husband for a divorce via cell-phone!

David is selfish, sarcastic and underemployed. He writes the "Angriest Man in Holloway" column for the local paper. Now, rather than acting in the expected manner when his wife asks for a divorce, he re-examines his own life and agrees with everything she says and becomes Good.

Enter Goodnews. A homeless person who seems to have powers of healing. He has a strange effect on David and David even lets him stay up in the spare room. Goodnews is making David look at the injustices in the world and try to put them right. Katie is trying hard to come to terms with this change. Having a hateful husband was horrible but is not sure whether it is much better having a super husband either.

Very funny, especially the old David, and well worth the time.

Instances of the Number 3

2004-10-15T13:50:00.000+02:00

By Salley Vickers

'A person ... isn't only flesh and blood. A person exists inside one, informing one's state of mind'.

This is a thoughtful story full of humour and surprises. Peter Handsome dies suddenly in a car accident and leaves behind a wife and a mistress. After his death the mistress, Frances Slater, a London art dealer and sometimes artists' model, contacts Peter's wife, the Shakespeare-loving Bridget Hansome. What the women do not know is that Peter was also involved with a third woman, a prostitute named Zelda.

Bridget has over the years accepted her husband's many love affairs but is, nonetheless, very hurt when she learns about Frances and Peter's loving relationship over the past seven years. I have to say that although Bridget might not be the most likeable of people, I could not help but feel her pain when finding out about Frances and Peter. A little surprisingly, the women become friends and discover that they have in common what is most important to them: the memory of the man they both loved. Slowly the women get to know each other and even spend weekends in the country together.

One day an Iranian boy, Zahin, shows up on Bridget's doorstep. He seems to have known Peter and so she lets him stay with her. Zahin is a whiz at housework as well as a natural flatterer, but has an even more mysterious sister...

After having read Miss Garnet's Angel I have to say I was a little disappointed with this novel. It did not live up to my expectations, so not a book I would read again.

The Valley of Horses

2004-09-30T18:49:00.000+02:00

By Jean M. Auel

This is the second novel in the epic series about the beautiful and bold Ayla, a girl of the Others, who, at the end of the last book, was cruelly cast out by the Clan that adopted her as a child. Ayla now has to set out on a journey all by herself, searching for the Others, a race as tall, blond, and blue-eyed as she.

After a while on the road Ayla finds a hidden valley where a herd of wild horses live. She finds a cave that is perfect, settles in the valley and brings a young horse into her cave to live with her. The horse is well cared for by Ayla and a unique relationship is formed between woman and horse .

The young horse is her only friend until Jondalar and his brother, Thonolan appear. They have just set out on a journey of their own. In fact, the book tells two separate stories; Ayla's story and the one of the two brothers.

Ayla rescues Jondalar and nurses him back from a fatal attack. He is the first she has ever met of the Others and Jondalar teaches her how to talk his language, so that they are able communicate with each other.

It is not until Ayla meets Jondalar that the story becomes interesting. Everything before that is not very interesting and too long-drawn out.

The story ends with Ayla and Jondalar riding off into the sunset - and now I cannot wait to find out what their next adventures will be like. Just such a pity that the first part of the story was so weak.

Blessings

2004-08-13T19:23:00.000+02:00

By Anna Quindlen

A sentimental novel with not very many surprises. Did not like it very much, so do not have much to say.

It is set on an estate named Blessings. Charles 'Skip' Cuddy has just been released from prison and goes to work on the estate as a caretaker. One morning he finds a baby at the bottom of the stairs. The baby, a girl he decides to name Faith, is at first kept secret from his employer, Lydia Blessing, but having no experience in the fine art of fatherhood she soon finds out. However, for reasons of her own, she decides to help Skip with the baby.

Faith becomes the start of a new life for Skip and the catalyst for the softening of the rigid Lydia. A novel of how the secrets of the past affect the future when in the end Faith is returned to her birthmother and Lydia dies.

The Lost Boy

2004-07-28T08:01:00.000+02:00

By Dave Pelzer

In this sequel to A Child Called 'It', we follow Dave on his journey through the foster care system from the age of 12 until he turns 18. He goes through painful lessons along the way, including the difficult task of fitting into a family he can rely on. As soon as he becomes attached to the foster parents, he is torn away and moved into a new foster home.

This book is also a tribute to all foster parents; people who make a difference in a young person's life and shapes them forever on their path to adulthood. Although an uplifting story, it also shows how the actions of poster parents may trigger negative experiences from the past.

A book filled with tears, laughter, devastation and hope, but most of all a very inspirational story. It is a story that speaks to your heart, as it tells you of one child's struggle to thrive in life while facing extreme difficulties.

Coastliners

2004-07-20T08:24:00.000+02:00

By Joanne Harris

'I returned after ten years' absence, on a hot day in late August, on the eve of summer's first bad tides. As I stood watching the approach from the deck of Brismand 1, the old ferry into La Houssinière, it was almost as though I had never left. Nothing had changed: the sharp smell of the air; the deck beneath my feet; the sound of the gulls in the hot blue sky. Ten years, almost half my life, erased at a single stroke, like writing in the sand. Or almost.'

Madeleine 'Mado' Prasteau was born and raised in the village of Les Salants on the beautiful island of Le Devin, just off the Atlantic coast of France. For the past 10 years she has been living in Paris with her mother, but when her mother dies she returns to the island to visit her father, GrosJean, whom she has had very little contact with over the last 10 years. GrosJean leads a very solitary life on the island, still grieving over his dead brother, P'titJean. Mado, being a bit of a tomboy, has always tried to fill the space of the son that GrosJean always wanted but never had.

Le Devin is made up of two rival villages, La Houssinière and Les Salants. In true Joanne Harris-style they are populated by very eccentric personalities! There is a neverending battle on the island against the tides and sand. The tides have brought a sandy beach to the village of La Houssinière and with it a few tourists and relative wealth. On the other side of the island the same tides threaten the very existence of the village of Les Salants.

The flooding and loss of sand in Les Salants is caused by the extension of a dyke in La Houssinière. It is the work of La Houssinière's richest businessman, Claude Brismand, whose link to Mado's father is only revealed at the end of the book. His change in the currents 3 years before has subtly rerouted the sand from Les Salants right to the front of his thriving hotel business. This causes Mado and another outsider, a charismatic Irish drifter named Flynn, who reluctantly becomes Mado's lover, to devise a plan to secretly build a reef in Les Salants and steal the beach back.

A very Joanne Harris-like book. A story shifting between family relationhips and community politics. Though a very good novel this is not one of her best.

Rush Home Road

2004-06-24T09:52:00.000+02:00

By Lori Lansens

'There were some days when there was no peace to be had and what you thought might happen didn't and what you never dreamed of did. Addy knew this would be one of those days. She shook a cigarette from her package and lit it while she wondered what to do.'

This is a beautifully written novel about a little girl who helps a grown woman find her way back home. It is a wonderful story about friendship and forgiveness.

The novel's main character is 70-year-old Adelaide 'Addy' Shadd, a woman of colour, who lives on the mud lane of the Lakeview trailer park. One summer she agrees to look after the 5-year-old mixed race girl Sharla Cody, thinking it will bring her much needed company. However, it seems like Sharla has come to stay when Sharla's mother, the trashy white woman Collette Depuis, empties her trailer and leaves Lakeview with her boyfriend in the middle of the night.

Addy lovingly looks after Sharla, who also reminds her of her own daughter, Chick. Sharla starts school and Addy helps her deal with a teacher who judges Sharla for being a product of an interracial relationship. On the other hand, Sharla brings back memories of Addy's past, which takes Addy down memory lane back to her childhood growing up in Rusholme, a small town where mostly coloured families had settled. She and her brother Leam were two very happy children, never fighting like other brothers and sisters. Life in Rusholme was very straight forward until the events of Strawberry Sunday. What happened that day forced 15-year-old Addy to leave her family home and the town she had grown up in.

However, the story ends warmly as she returns to her hometown of Rusholme. A town that provides a warm reception on her return.

A Child Called 'It'

2004-06-04T09:56:00.000+02:00

By Dave Pelzer

This is the first part of an autobiographical trilogy series. Dave grows up beaten and starved by his alcoholic mother. He has to sleep in an old army cot in the basement and is only given very small amounts of food, barely enough to keep him alive. Often he has to eat leftovers from the dog's bowl. His two brothers are not allowed to acknowledge his presence and his father does not seem to know what to do with the situation.

He soon has to learn to play his mother's games. She considers him more like a slave, more an 'it' than a boy. One time she even pulls his arm out of its socket and does not take him to the hospital for 18 hours.

The most disturbing part is that the outside world knows nothing of his living nightmare. There is no one to turn to, only his dreams of someone taking care of him, loving him and calling him their son keeps Dave alive, until one day he finally finds salvation when his teachers call the authorities.

In one word; shocking!

Girl With a Pearl Earring

2004-06-02T09:58:00.000+02:00

By Tracey Chevalier

The story springs out from the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer's painting 'Girl With a Pearl Earring'. It is an attempt by the author to tell the story behind this painting, trying to find the answer to why the girl looked the way she did.

Griet is the Protestant daughter of a Delft tile painter who has lost his sight in an accident. In order to bring income to her struggling family, Griet starts to work as a maid for Vermeer and his wife, Catharina, in their growing Catholic household. The Vermeer household, with its five children, grandmother and long-time servant, is ready to make Griet's working life difficult.

Vermeer himself is a moody person, who spends long hours locked away in his vast studio. His pregnant wife is resentful and jealous of Griet's youth and beauty. Griet quickly becomes fascinatied with her master's paintings. Vermeer senses that Griet has an appreciation of his work no one else in the family shows. He secretly makes her his assistant, teaching her to buy and mix his paints. Their relationship is concealed from the family much due to the fact that Catharina is not allowed into Vermeer's studio because of her clumsiness and lack of appreciation for his artwork.

However, their relationship cannot go on unnoticed forever. One day the wealthy Master van Ruijven, Vermeer's most prominent patron, demands that Vermeer is to paint Griet for his next commissioned work - and it is then that Vermeer paints her wearing his wife's pearl earrings.

A novel that is a beautifully written pearl of its own.

A Rhinestone Button

2004-05-20T10:00:00.000+02:00

By Gail Anderson-Dargatz

Hmmm... The previous two novels by Gail Anderson-Dargatz have both been among my favourites - I do not think this one will be.

Job Sunstrum lives a sad and small life in the small farming town of Godsfinger, Alberta, where he grew up. He has always been a bit of an outsider. Job suffers from a rare disorder, synesthesia, which leads him to perceive sounds as colours and shapes. As a young man he was very thin with blond, curly hair. He loved baking and cooking, and did not fit in with the farmboys around town. His father was very domineering and his brother a bully. When his father dies, and his brother leaves to train as a pastor, Job takes over the farm. His community remains his animals and the church women with whom he shares his baking on Sundays. Lonely beyond belief, and overwhelmed by religious guilt, Job turns to God and hopes that someday he will find a nice Christian woman to marry, and settle down to the farming life, as his father did before him.

Then one year, his older brother, Jacob, an unemployed Baptist preacher, and his wife return to live on the farm, pushing Job out of his home and into the hired hand’s cabin. Slowly Job’s life starts to fall apart, causing him to lose touch with his mystical side, falling prey to guilt and anxiety. His neighbour Will, the closest thing he has to a friend, is exposed to the town as gay. Consumed with guilt Job allows himself to be caught up in the Pentecostal drive of a preacher named Jack Divine, hoping that clinging to his beliefs and proving his faith will make everything all right.

However, it is not in church that Ed finds ultimately finds what he is searching for. It is Ed, Will’s ex-lover, who helps Job understand that being a good man is about more than who you have sex with - and divorced hippie waitress Liv, who doesn’t believe in God, who ultimately leads Job to a new level of faith. However, to find out what Job learns at the end, the reader has to grind through endless church services. Something that made me want to give up half way through.

Kate's Story

2004-05-04T10:00:00.000+02:00

By Billy Hopkins

Kate's Story is based on the life of Billy Hopkins' mother, Kate. It is the first of several autobiographical novels about the author's life.

In this first novel we follow Kate as she tries to rise above the slums and the workhouse to build a better life for herself and her family. The story begins on her 11th birthday, celebrated on the same day as Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, and ends when she finds out she is pregnant with Billy.

A wondeful story about love, loss, persistance and determination. I enjoyed every page!

The Virgin Blue

2004-04-19T10:01:00.000+02:00

By Tracey Chevalier

I read this book mostly on planes (a perfect book for travelling!) and soon found myself engrossed in the story, which has everything from historical fiction and suspense to romance and the supernatural. It alternates between the stories of Ella and Isabelle. Though they are born centuries apart they are bound by a fateful family legacy.

Isabelle’s story takes place in 16th-century France during the development of the Protestant Reformation. As a child, Isabelle du Moulin is drawn to a church statue of the Virgin Mary, which sits in a niche painted a very special blue. When it is first installed the sun's rays light up the statue and Isabelle's hair, turning her hair a coppery colour. From then on she is called "La Rousse" and becomes tormented and shunned by her hardworking, God-fearing Huguenot community, which becomes suspicious of her lingering adoration for the Virgin Mary, her skills at midwifery, her mysterious association with wild wolves and her fiery red hair. When the statue eventually is destroyed, Isabelle becomes more of an outsider because of her mystical link to the Virgin. However, all her life she continues to dream of the virgin and that special blue colour.

When Isabelle becomes pregnant by Etienne du Moulin, she marries into the severe Tournier family, outwardly stoic followers of the Truth who covertly adhere to older, pagan superstitions. Like all Huguenots during the persecutions in the 1570's, the du Moulins are forced to flee to Switzerland. Trouble erupts within the family when the hair of Isabelle's daughter Marie starts to turn the same coppery red colour as her mother's.

Ella’s story takes place more than four centuries later. The American Ella Turner and her husband Rick move to a small town in France. She hopes to brush up on her French, qualify to practice as a midwife and start a family. However, she struggles to adapt and is not given a particularly warm welcome. She also keeps having nightmares of the colour blue. While in France her father suggests that she take the opportunity to visit her relatives in Switzerland and upon her father’s suggestion, Ella starts to investigate her French Huguenot ancestry, trace their flight into Switzerland and eventually unearth the sinister family secret that has been buried for four hundred years. But the search is not an easy one as Ella knows no more than her family's original surname, Tournier. She begins her research at a local library where she meets and befriends librarian Jean Paul. Then one afternoon, Ella discovers her brown hair inexplicably beginning to turn red…

Gradually the strange blue colour becomes a stronger presence in her life and inevitably draws her to her ancestor Isabelle Tournier.

Fingersmith

2004-03-16T10:04:00.000+01:00

By Sarah Waters

London, 1862. 17-year-old Sue Trinder is an orphan. She has grown up in Lant Street, living with Mrs. Sucksby and Mr. Ibbs. However, Sue’s fate is linked to another orphan growing up in a gloomy mansion not too many miles away.

“My name, in those days, was Susan Trinder. People called me Sue. I know the year I was born in, but for many years I did not know the date, and took my birthday at Christmas. I believe I am an orphan.”

Sue’s mother arrived pregnant on Mrs. Sucksby’s doorstep and stayed with her until the police found her, arrested her and hanged her for murder. Mr. Ibbs makes his living melting down silver and gold stolen by the thieves around London. In fact, the word, fingersmith, was slang for pickpockets in 19th century London. Mrs. Sucksby is a ‘baby farmer’, taking in unwed mothers and orphaned babies, selling the babies. However, Mrs. Sucksby has kept Sue close, as if she were her own daughter, and she knows of little beyond Lant Street and petty thievery.

One day “Gentleman” shows up. He is a 28 year-old con man, well-known among the London thieves. Quite good-looking, but penniless.

“We called him Gentleman, because he really was a gent -- had been, he said to a real gent’s school, and had a father and a mother and a sister -- all swells -- whose heart he had just about broke. He had money once, and lost it all gambling…”

“Gentleman” has come to request Sue's assistance in a swindle with great potential. He has acquired a position at a country estate mounting the owner’s, Christopher Lilly’s, art collection onto frames. Mr. Lilly, who is an old scholarly man with a huge collection of books, has an orphaned niece, 17-year-old Maud. She lives at the estate, helping him with his library. “Gentleman”, who is known as Richard Rivers to the Lillys, plans on courting Maud and secretly marrying her without her uncle’s knowledge. Then he is to put her into an insane asylum, keeping her inheritance for himself.

“Gentleman” has come to London to get Sue’s assistance. She is to become Maud’s maid and chaperon. This will give “Gentleman” more freedom to court Maud and Sue will be able to convince Maud that eloping with “Richard” is the right thing to do. Sue agrees to the plan. She is to receive a 3,000 pound payment (half of which is to go to the greedy Mrs. Sucksby) once Maud has been placed in the asylum - but once Sue meets Maud and gets to know her, she could never imagine that her heart would interfere with the carefully laid plans to fleece the vulnerable and lonely Maud. She begins to pity Maud Lilly and care for her in unexpected ways, as the intimacies between a lady and her personal maid take on an increasingly erotic turn.

Set in Victorian England this was an absolutely perfect novel for me! The plot is good with a rather surprising twist at the end. But it is also a story that gives the reader a great historical peak into insane asylums, prisons and the public spectacle of hangings during the Victorian Era - although Victorian pornography also has a significant presence in this novel.

Brick Lane

2004-03-09T10:05:00.000+01:00

By Monica Ali

This is the story of Nazneen. She comes to England at the age of 18, from a village in Bangladesh, to marry 40-year-old Chanu, a marriage her father has arranged after the death of her mother. Having always been the ‘good daughter’ she accepts her fate and travels to London. When she arrives, she can speak only two words of English: sorry and thank you. She soon falls into the role of dutiful wife and mother, accepting the miserably lonely existence fate has bestowed on her in a London council flat. Not only is she always an outsider but her Bangladeshi roots keep her in a subservient role in her marriage and family. Her husband does not allow her to have much contact with the other Bangladeshi immigrants living there, as he believes them to be uneducated, illiterate and uncultured. However, she does become friends with the other Bangladeshi woman on the estate. All of whom are struggling to bring up their children and assimilate into English society.

In Bangladesh, Nazneen’s sister, Hasina, has eloped with her lover, spurning her arranged marriage. This has caused her to be disowned, resulted in heartbreak and tragedy.

The story follows both Nazneen as she experiences her new culture, and her sister Hasina's life back in Bangladesh where she has fled her violent husband and found work in a garment factory. Her letters in very broken English to Nazneen are interspersed throughout the novel and we learn of her descent into prostitution in order to survive.

Nazneen, now a mother of two daughters, Bibi and Shahana, is forced to start sewing to make ends meet. This is how she meets the young and charismatic Karim, who almost every day drops off work for Nazneen’s sewing job. Nazneen finds herself caught between the comforts of her family and the excitement the world her young lover provides. As a Muslim activist Karim also encourages her participation in community politics. The book explores a little of the Muslim backlash following the 9-11 attacks and the ensuing race riots experienced in England.

I have nothing bad to say about this book, but think I would have enjoyed it more had I not already read White Teeth. I found the books to be very similar both in the story that they tell and the problems which are highlighted and talked about. Like White Teeth this novel is also about the yearning for a sense of belonging in a foreign land. It is not a uninteresting story, nor is it badly written, but somehow I kept comparing the two as I went along, and ended up liking White Teeth better.

The Secret House of Death

2004-02-12T10:06:00.000+01:00

By Ruth Rendell

I cannot say this is a bad novel, because there is simply no such thing as a bad Ruth Rendell novel. However, it falls into the average category. It is an uninteresting plot and the story goes nowhere. The good thing, though, is that this is one of Ruth Rendell’s first novels and fortunately they have evolved a lot from then. Another positive thing is that the ending is, as always, surprising and well worth waiting for.

The plot is fairly simple and straightforward. Louise North has an affair. She tells everyone the man who has been coming to her house is a central heating salesman, though he is, of course, her lover. Susan Townsend is Louise’s next door neighbour. One day she discovers the dead bodies of Susan and her lover. From that day on Susan helps Louise’s husband, Bob, get back on his feet again. But is Bob ‘only’ her neighbour or has he also got something to do with the murder??

The Lovely Bones

2004-02-03T10:06:00.000+01:00

By Alice Sebold

“My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973.”

On 6 December 1973 14-year-old Susie Salmon is raped and murdered by a neighbour, a serial killer who moves from town to town after each of his crimes.

It is a novel that explores the two levels of death - both those that are left behind and the departed. The narrator of the story is Susie. From heaven she is watching her friends, family and the murderer move on with their lives. She watches how life on Earth is continuing without her; how her school-friends trade rumours about her disappearance, how her family holds out hope that she'll be found and how her killer tries to cover his tracks.

Susie is able to witness events on Earth without the limitations imposed by time and space and can thus witness her family, friends and murderer, and know what they are thinking and doing. She can see anything and follow thoughts, even see into her killer’s past, but has only minimal impact on events. All Susie wants is to live again but knowing that she can’t, she watches everyone she knew deal with their own grief and understanding of death and tragedy. Her father, who suspects the killer's identity, goes crazy with grief over the loss of his first-born and his inability to do anything about it. Her mother, who never wanted children, withdraws from her family and into an affair. Susie's sister, Lindsey, fears the kids at school will forever define her by Susie's death and their little brother, Buckley, struggles to understand the meaning of death.

In the book Susie describes heaven as a place of many things to many souls. Susie’s heaven is filled with delights, like peppermint stick ice cream that is not seasonal.

“Heaven wasn't perfect. But I came to believe that if I watched closely, and desired, I might change the lives of those I loved on Earth.”

The dead may be able to see and hear the people they loved on earth and the living may even believe they are seeing and hearing brief glimpses of their lost loved ones, but they cannot communicate with each other. Susie cannot name her killer or tell anyone where her body is, nor can she get her number one wish: to be alive again with her killer dead.

This is a different murder mystery. We already know the solution and what happened. The story is one filled with hope and tenderness told in a very sensitive and uplifting manner. It is reassuring for anyone who has ever lost a loved one; maybe there is a sense of communication between the living and the dead. This is not one of the best books I have ever read – towards the end certain sections fell somewhat flat and at times it is rather tedious reading – but it was intriguing enough to make me turn page after page and go on reading.

Drowning Ruth

2004-01-21T10:07:00.000+01:00

By Christina Schwarz

The year is 1919 and the setting is a family home on Wisconsin's Lake Nagawaukee. Nurse Amanda (Mandy) Starkey spends her days nursing soldiers wounded in the Great War. One day she feels overwhelmed and decides to take leave and return home to the farm where she grew up. She is welcomed by her sister Mathilda (Mattie) and Mattie's 3-year-old daughter Ruth. One year later, Mattie mysteriously disappears and is later found drowned beneath the ice that covers the lake. Shattered by the events, Mandy’s guilt forces her to care for the young Ruth and assume the duties of the farm.

When Mattie's husband, and Ruth's father, Carl, returns from the war, he finds himself a widower with a young daughter who does not know him. He blames himself for leaving and is truly baffled by Mandy's version of the events of that fateful evening.

The story is told alternately in the voices of Mandy, Carl and Ruth. We learn that Mandy has harboured insecurities since her childhood and that her naïveté got her into trouble long before she returned home during the war.

One of Ruth’s earliest memories is of drowning in the frozen lake along with her mother, a story her aunt dismisses. Her memories of her mother's death become more vivid as she gets older and she gradually becomes aware of the odd events of her childhood, realising something dreadful happened to her mother and eventually learning the horrible truth that has pulled her family apart.

There were two things I did not particularly like about this novel. The first is how the story skips back and forth between past and present, which at times can be rather tiring. The second is how the author creates expectations of a shocking and unexpected ending that are not lived up to.

Geisha of Gion

2004-01-08T10:08:00.000+01:00

By Mineko Iwasaki & Rande Brown

This is an autobiography written by the former Geisha, Mineko Iwasaki, and an interesting peek into a world totally unknown for most people. Contrary to western belief, Geishas are not a type of prostitute, but are formally trained artisans and artists.

Mineko Iwasaki was born in 1949 and was taken into an ‘okiya’ (Geisha house) when she was only 5 years old due to her family's financial distress, something that was not uncommon.

This is the story of her life as a Geisha and the training process she had to go through to become a Geisha. This included hours of rigorous dance classes and tea ceremony classes in order to learn the manners and traditions of being a Geisha. However, her hard work paid off as she became one of the most successful and famous Geishas during her time.

The Return of the King

2003-12-22T09:12:00.000+01:00

By J.R.R. Tolkien

This is the last book in the ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy. Every autumn and winter for the past two years, Frodo and his friends have kept me company. Now that is over. It feels a little sad, but I also feel a sense of relief having finally finished this trilogy.

Frodo is nearing the end of his quest. He has been poisoned and has fallen into the hands of the Enemy. His faithful friend, Sam, rescues Frodo from Cirith Ungol and the two resume their march toward Mount Doom.

At the same time Aragorn is preparing for the final battles with Sauron. He hopes that by keeping Sauron's attention focused on himself, Frodo will be able to complete his task.

Merry stays with King Theodon as the Riders of Rohan are gathered. Pippin goes forward and becomes a squire for Boromir's father, the Steward of Gondor. The others stay with Aragorn, ready to fight with him until the end. Of course Legolas and Gimli are also keeping score of the number of enemies they kill, trying to outdo the other.

Having achieved victory on the Pelennor, the Princes of the West march on Mordor itself. Their worst fears are confirmed when parley fails and the full host of Mordor descends upon them.

In the end Aragorn can claim his rightful place as King and finally marries Arwen, who is Half-Elven. She has to choose between mortality (to be human) and immortality (to be Elvish). In marrying Aragorn, she chooses to share the fate of her husband and ultimately gives up her own life for him.

Frodo joins Bilbo and Gandalf aboard an Elvish ship bound for the blessed land in the West to live in immortality, and it is with great sorrow that Sam bids him goodbye.

Although not my favourite genre it is, nonetheless, a true masterpiece. I wish I had the creativity and imagination of Tolkien!

I Capture the Castle

2003-11-25T19:27:00.000+01:00

By Dodie Smith

This novel is a love story set in the 1930s. 17-year-old Cassandra Mortimer lives with her family in a small ramshackle castle in the English countryside. She is the middle child, plainer than her older sister, but still lovely. A quiet observer; the serious girl who wishes to perfect her writing skills. This novel is her journal over six turbulent months of her life.

The family have very little money, mostly because their father, a writer blocked by his own past display of genius, has not written a novel in over a decade. His bohemian second wife, Topaz, poses nude in the rain and dyes the family clothes green for no good reason at all. Cassandra’s beautiful older sister, Rose, wishes desperately for a way out by marrying into money. There is also the witty younger brother, Thomas.

One day two wealthy American brothers, Simon and Neil, arrive at the castle. Rose decides to marry one for his money and using their guile, Rose and Cassandra begin devising a way to woo Simon's heart, which would lead to Rose's departure and riches for the family. It is all very muddled up when she runs off with the other brother and Cassandra kisses Rose's ex.

Her journal candidly chronicle the great changes that take place within the walls of the old castle as well as her own first descent into love.

I really liked this book in the beginning but nearing the end I somehow lost interest. Maybe because it all started out as more of an adventure story but ended up being a love story, and a love story I have read so many times before. I also thought it a very fitting novel for teenage girls, because somehow I found the story a little childish at time.

The Bookseller of Kabul

2003-11-15T08:17:00.000+01:00

By Åsne Seierstad

“Never have I had the urge to hit anyone as much as I did there. The same thing was continually provoking me: the manner in which men treated women.”

This book is written by Norwegian journalist Åsne Seierstad who, after the fall of the Taliban in November 2001, went to Afghanistan to report on the conflict. The following spring she returned to live with a bookseller and his family for several months.

Sultan Khan (this is not his real name) owns a bookstore in Kabul and has defied the authorities for 20 years to supply books to the people of Kabul. He claims to have 10,000 books on Afghanistan, the world’s largest collection. This has led him to be imprisoned twice by the communists and also jailed by the Taliban. He was even forced to watch illiterate Taliban soldiers burn some of his most precious works in huge bonfires on the streets of Kabul. When he was freed, he hid the books in attics all over the city and smuggled others out to Pakistan. But while Khan is passionate in his love of books and hatred of censorship, he is also a committed Muslim with strict views on family life.

This book offers a unique view into the life of Afghan women especially. It clearly shines through that although the author obviously respected her host in many ways, she finds it difficult to come to terms with some of his values, in particular his treatment of the women in his family. We hear about how he buys himself a 16-year-old bride without telling his wife of 30 years and how he uses his sister as a maid, refusing to let her become a teacher. Even though he is a bookseller he still deprives his sons of education. He also gets a poor carpenter jailed for three years for stealing a few postcards from his store, leaving the man’s destitute family, including two daughters who have polio, with no means of support.

A very interesting book which gives the reader a unique view into the lives of the Afghan people, both before and after the fall of the Taliban. You cannot help but feel for the women who seem to be suffering so much. This is not a book you read because of the author’s brilliant writing skills, because it is written very matter-of-factly (remember the author is a journalist). It is also short on Afghanistan history, which might leave a Westerner feeling a bit confused since I do not think we are very knowledgeable of basic Afghanistan history. All that aside, this is an intimate and fascinating portrait of a family and a unique perspective on a troubled country.

Anne of Windy Willows

2003-10-30T09:20:00.000+01:00

By L.M. Montgomery

This book covers three years in Anne's life. She has finished her studies and has now moved away to work as a teacher and headmistress at Summerside High School. Windy Wollows is her new home, which she shares with three other women.

Anne is also waiting for Gilbert to finish medical school. This book is mainly made up of Anne's letters to Gilbert where she writes about her new home, job and everything else she encounters in her new hometown. Like always, Anne has enemies - but like always, she turns them into her friends. She also touches and changes the lives of those she becomes close to and also people she meets along her way.

This is a really adorable book. No other word can be used to cover it. It is still not as good as the first book but one of the better out of the four so far.

Only In America

2003-10-18T17:12:00.000+02:00

By Dominic Holland

This book is written by comedian Dominic Holland, and it is a witty and funny story. A true romantic comedy fairytale. It is a book that screams film from the first paragraph.

The whole story is based on three simple questions.
- How does a film script by an unknown writer get to be read by a Hollywood studio boss?
- What happens if he loves it?
- What does his people do if they have no idea who wrote it?

Juliet Millhouse (Milly) is a frustrated hotel receptionist working at a posh London hotel frequented by businesspeople and stars, including Hollywood producers. She is a wannabe screenwriter, stuck in workaday London. Although she has been rejected time and time again, she is still desperate to get her debut script into the hands of Hollywood's deal-makers.

On the other side of the Atlantic monster studio mogul Willenheim is looking for his next hit. Somehow Milly's script gets mixed up with those from Willenheim's development department. They fall in love with the script but before they can turn it into a movie, they need to find the person who wrote it. Hollywood studio exec Mitch Carmichael starts a frantic hunt for the mysterious screenwriter. He leaves for London and checks into Milly's hotel starting a journey of coincidences and incredibly funny mishaps! And in true Hollywood style romance is in the air.

Funny!!

London Dust

2003-10-14T22:31:00.000+02:00

By Lee Jackson

This is a mystery novel set in Victorian London. The atmosphere of the novel was totally brilliant and had me completely wrapped up in the story. You could literally feel the fog and the dark alleys.

The plot centres on the brutal murder of "The Brick Lane Butterfly", Miss Ellen (Nellie) Warwick. The chief suspect is her maid, Nathalie Meadows, who, to escape the horror she has just witnessed, jumps from Blackfriars Bridge. But Nathalie is rescued and the body the police salvages is that of a nameless, hapless suicide.

Feeling duty-bound to find the murderer of her best friend, Nathalie reinvents herself as Flora Thorne and is determined to get to the bottom of her mistress's murder.

Nathalie/Flora’s story is alternated with that of Harry Shaw, a con man who scrapes by on whatever he can con or thieve. Thinking Nathalie is out of the picture, the police turn their attention to Harry for 'help with their enquiries'. However, it is only Natalie who can discover the truth about who killed Nellie. A truth that is not too exciting or interesting, but the story itself (and not forgetting the Victorian atmosphere of the novel) makes up for it big time.

Some of the characters of this novel are also well worth reading the book to experience. Such as the cruel impresario Arthur Wilkes or Reverend Hengist Wallace, advocate of Hygienic Christianity and firm believer that the road to heaven is furnished with a daily bath.

White Teeth

2003-10-04T23:08:00.000+02:00

By Zadie Smith

Well,' said Joyce, released by Marcus and planting herself down at the circular table, inviting them to do the same, 'you look very exotic. Where are you from, if you don't mind me asking?' 'Willesden,' said Irie and Millat simultaneously.

'Yes, yes, of course, but where originally?' 'Oh,' said Millat, putting on what he called a bud-bud-ding-ding accent. 'You are meaning where from I am originally.' Joyce looked confused. 'Yes, originally.' 'Whitechapel,' said Millat, pulling out a fag. 'Via the Royal London Hospital and the 207 bus.'

White Teeth is the story about Archie and Samad and their friendship. They are in their 50's and have been friends since they served in World War II together.

Archie (Alfred Archibald Jones) is a working-class Englishman. The story starts with Archie trying to commit suicide after his wife has left him, but is rescued by a local ritual butcher for which Archie is grateful. He had changed his mind, but was too far gone to come to his own rescue. He then goes on to marry the much younger Clara, a beautiful, but toothless, woman of Jamaican decent, who gives up her boyfriend Ryan to marry him. Together they have a daughter named Irie, the Jamaican word for "no problem".

Samad Iqbal is an Allah-fearing Bengali Muslim, who came to England in the great wave of immigrants in the 1970s. He is working as a waiter in a touristy Indian restaurant in Leicester Square. His grandfather was the famous Mangal Pande, a Bengal leader who first died fighting the English in India in 1857. Samad is married to Alsana who, like Clara, is much younger than her husband. They have twin sons, Magid and Millat.

We follow Archie and Samad through their marriages and the problems that arise as they bring up their children. All three children experience what it is like growing up in two cultures, being pulled in different directions. They are drawn to assimilate into British culture but also faces the direct prejudices of outright racists, and the oblivious racism of the average Englishman. This causes some of them to be drawn to isolationist religious and racist movements or radical activism. In fact, several of the characters in this book are involved in religion and politics at the extremes. There are Jehovah's Witnesses, Islamic Fundamentalists and Animal Rights activists.

Samad, distressed at the materialism of London, sends Magid back to Bangladesh, much against his wife’s wishes, in order for him to become spiritual and an orthodox Muslim. Ironically he instead comes back more English than the English while his twin brother, having lived all his life in England, is leaning more towards the fundamentalist Muslim movement.

Then Joyce and Marcus Chalfen come on the scene with their own ideas about raising the Jones and Iqbal children. They take to the new family members with great enthusiasm. Even Magid, on his return to England as a young man, becomes friends with Marcus Chalfen.

The story ends with the launch of FutureMouse, a genetically engineered mouse by Marcus Chalfen to be launched on 31 December 1999. His experiments with mice attract the attention of a radical animal rights group, a militant Muslim organization and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. These groups, ignorant of each other’s determinations, converge on the opening of his public presentation and exhibit.

On the whole this is a very good book. The story deals with origins and conflicts, and that whatever our background, conflicts can ensue when we are trying to find our origins. It also deals with conflicts between religion and science, between East and West, and between sons and fathers – so I am sure we can all find something to relate to in this story. It is an interesting plot, but unfortunately, there are too many threads left dangling, which I think is the reason I lost interest in the story about ¾ through the book. It went really quickly too - it was literally from one page to the other. The ending is also a bit confusing and too farfetched, in my opinion.

The Nanny Diaries

2003-09-14T09:46:00.000+02:00

By Nicola Kraus & Emma McLaughlin

Every season of my nanny career kicked off with a round of interviews so surreally similar that I'd often wonder if the mothers were slipped a secret manual at the Parents League to guide them through. This initial encounter became as repetitive as religious ritual, tempting me, in the moment before the front door swung open, either to kneel and genuflect or say, "Hit it!"

The novel portrays the struggles of a young nanny who cares for a poor little rich boy who is emotionally abandoned and rigidly programmed by narcissistic parents. It is based on the two authors’ real experiences as professional nannies for over 30 families in New York City. It is a funny book with many hilarious episodes. But also sad, because the children seem to be forgotten and neglected by their parents, who just shuffles them off to their nannies and baby-sitters instead of spending time with them themselves.

The main character, Nanny, is a child psychology major at NYU. In order to make her monthly rent payments she accepts a position with the incredibly affluent X family caring for their 4-year-old son Grayer a few hours a week. She runs him to his constant stream of French lessons, ice-skating lessons, play dates and other activities. Mrs. X treats her son as a fashion accessory and does not clean, cook, work or much of anything except shop for herself, schedule incredibly complicated days for her son and then neglects him. Nanny is treated less-than-human by Mrs. X and is just someone to keep her son out of her hair and see to all her personal errands.

Nanny perseveres despite the growing demands on her schedule and her heart. An adulterous father brings added stress to the household, sending Mrs. X. deeper into self-obsession. Grounded and good-hearted, Nanny stays in an untenable situation much longer than most would because she cares deeply about the fate of little Grayer.

The ending is wonderfully funny. Mrs. X suddenly tells Nanny she has to leave – and this leads Nanny to give Mrs. X a piece of her mind. But it also broke my heart that just a few moments earlier little Grayer had looked into Nanny’s eyes and said he knew she would be leaving him, just like all the others did... and Nanny had assured him she would not...

Village Matters

2003-08-28T09:54:00.000+02:00

By Rebecca Shaw

Again I found myself in the small English rural village of Turnham Malpas. Yet again I was able to meet with all the people there including the rector (who had twins with another woman and whose wife is still with him and they have adopted the two children) and the lovely Muriel. I think she is my favourite.

Again there are things happening in Turnham Malpas. All of which I think are blown out of proportion but that is also the wonderful thing about these books. They are purely for entertainment and nothing else.

The village store owner's daughter, Flick, is run over by a car which happens to be driven by Alan, who works in the pub. Everyone in the village turn against him but that is only until he saves Sir Ralph's (Muriel's husband) life after he has a heart attack. There is also tension in the marriage between Sir Ralph and Muriel when he wants to build new houses on a piece of land he did not know that he owned. Muriel is not happy about this, and so are some of the villagers, but here the tension also blows over - results in a new found friendship between Sir Ralph and his cousin.

The Clan of the Cave Bear

2003-08-20T20:54:00.000+02:00

By Jean M. Auel

This is the first book in the Earth’s Children-series about Ayla and the Clan of the Cave Bear, and is a fascinating introduction to what life might have been like 25,000 years ago.

It starts with an earthquake in which Ayla, a 5-year-old girl, loses her entire family. She wanders about until she is found by Clan people, ill and unconscious in a lion cave. Ayla was born to the Others (people who look more like the humans we know today) and does not belong to the Clan, a group of Neanderthals. They therefore want to leave her in the cave, but Iza, the Clan’s medicine woman, refuses to leave the helpless little girl.

Iza becomes Ayla’s mother and raises her together with her brother, Creb, the clan’s Mog-ur (the highest ranked spiritual person). Slowly she is adopted by the Clan although many members resent her deeply. Among them is Broud - the Clan’s next leader. However, Ayla soon starts to feel at home with the Clan. She helps Iza hunt for specific plants, who also teaches her medicine skills, and learns how to hunt, which women are strictly forbidden to do in the Clan. When Broud finds out about Ayla's ability to hunt, she is in deep trouble and is severely punished.

Ayla becomes the mother of a baby boy. She names him Durc. In reality it is Broud who is the father of her son but since the Clan does not believe sex will lead to babies, they do not know or think that Broud is the father. Their world is the world of the spirits, and it is spirits that start babies.

Then comes the day when Broud takes over leadership of the Clan. Broud’s hatred towards Ayla has now grown even bigger, and in the end he manages to turn the Clan against her. She is now forced to leave the Clan – and her son - to save her life. On a cold dark night she wanders away in search of the Others.

Anne of the Island

2003-07-08T21:23:00.000+02:00

By L.M. Montgomery

This book mainly concentrates on Anne's four years at Redmond College. She is going to leave her home of Green Gables to move to Kingsport to get a BA. At Redmond she makes new friends and meets new boys.

The story now moves from an innocent young girl's dreams to a young woman's first faltering steps into womanhood. It is quite an enjoyable story with many new characters entering the scene. However, I do feel that the story has somehow lost a little of its original enthusiasm but that might just be Anne growing up. She cannot allow herself to be the carefree child she once was but now has to make choices for herself that will affect the rest of her life - such as whom she should marry...

Miss Garnet's Angel

2003-06-26T17:40:00.000+02:00

By Salley Vickers

"The greatest wisdoms are not those which are written down but those which are passed between human beings who understand each other.... "

The story starts in Ealing, London but is soon transferred to Venice, Italy where it comes to life. It is a very optimistic and heart-warming novel about Miss Julia Garnet, a retired history teacher in her sixties – and still a virgin – who decides to spend six months in Venice after her friend and flat-mate of 30 years, Harriet Josephs, passes away. It is a decision that sparks an exhilarating adventure of the soul. She now embarks on a journey that leads her through the three F’s of her life: fear, faith and friendship. Julia begins to blossom.

“When I came to Venice I’d never really seen beauty before…I’d never really let it inside me...”

The strange beauty of Venice, with its spectacular architecture and abundance of art, history and ancient mysticism, storms Julia's staunch English reserve and challenges her socialist ideology. For the first time in her life she falls in love. Carlo is a charming art dealer with twinkling eyes and a white moustache.

Intertwined with Julia’s story is also a retelling of the story of Tobias from the Apocrypha, from the Old Testament, who, when growing old and blind, decides to undertake a journey of his own. A story that could perhaps have been left out all the same, as I did not feel it added much value to the storyline, even if it gives many parallels to Julia’s fate. It surely did not captivate me in the same way as it did Julia. Together with the beauty of Venice, the story of Tobias gives her a new “excitement” late in life.

While in Venice Julia overcomes her fear of the unknown, rediscovers her faith and develops deep friendships.

Some of the friendships she makes are with a beautiful Italian boy called Nicco and an enigmatic pair of twins engaged in restoring the 14th century Chapel-of-the-Plague. However, it is not until she discovers a series of paintings in the Church of the Angel Raphael that Julia is able to transform and to reassess her past. A past that is still very much haunted by her tyrannical, abusive father.

An excellent cast of characters and an interesting story full of death, love, myth, faith, truth and hate.

Resistance

2003-06-15T00:26:00.000+02:00

By Anita Shreve

This book takes us back to The Second World War and a Nazi-occupied Belgian village, where ah an American plane crashing in the woods outside the village. The pilot, Ted, is rescued by 10-year-old Jean and is taken to the house of Henri and Claire, a married couple who have experience in harbouring people fleeing from the Germans.

Being an Anita Shreve-novel romance is not far away, and as Claire nurses the American bomber pilot back to health in their secret attic hideaway, she falls in love. There are things about the story that might make you doubt the falling in love bit and their passionate affair, but nevertheless, my conclusion is that she did in fact fall in love with Ted and knew nothing of Henri’s betrayal when taking Henri and another man to what Ted thought was going to be his escape route to France.

Although the story ends in 1944 the author has decided not to leave her readers hanging by a thread, with a thousand questions at the end - and thank God for that! There is a last chapter that provides answers to many of the questions readers might be left with after having read the novel. Claire tells her story to Ted's son Tom who also gets to meet his half-sister, Charmaine - a result of the 20 days Claire and Ted spent together.

Adam and Eve and Pinch Me

2003-06-04T23:39:00.000+02:00

By Ruth Rendell

«Adam and Eve and Pinch Me went down the river to bathe. Adam and Eve were drowned, who was saved?»

This rhyme is a favourite of Jeffrey Leach (aka Jeff/Jerry/Jock), who, after having sponged off five women, becomes the victim of one of his female prey. It is an excellent Ruth Rendell novel with a neat and tidy plot. Even though it is not the best Rendell book I have read to date, it will definitely stick with me for some time to come.

The novel contains three separate plots. Barely touching each other they still have one thing in common; the three central characters have all had relationships with an attractive scoundrel who was after nothing but their money. Remarkably, all of these characters' lives intersect because of a series of coincidences, with all roads leading back to Jeff/Jerry/Jock. I think part of Rendell’s genius is managing to craft a detailed plot without any confusion, without the coincidences seeming contrived.

First there is single mother Zillah. Although she has not actually been divorced from her estranged husband Jerry, whom she believes died in the train crash at Paddington Station, she tries to escape poverty by marrying Jim, a gay Conservative MP who feels pressured to get married in order to maintain status quo. Zillah accepts his proposal (with a full understanding of his sexuality) for financial stability, although she is not entirely convinced her husband is actually dead, but decides not to pursue the matter.

Secondly, there is the obese Michelle and anorexic Matthew, who do not approve of their wealthy friend and neighbour Fiona's boyfriend, Jeff, who is sponging off her. One day he simply disappears.

Last but not least we have Araminta (Minty) Knox, who is an obsessive-compulsive, washing and rewashing herself and her clothing, and knocking on wood several times a day to prevent some unforeseen disaster. Her fiancé, Jock Lewis, borrows her savings and disappears soon thereafter. Minty is told he died in the train crash at Paddington Station. The truth being he has taken all her savings and run off to be with another woman.

Minty is soon haunted by what she believes is the ghost of Jock. She starts to see in all kinds of odd places, often clad in his usual leather jacket. Even though Minty is not unfamiliar with ghosts (she is often visited by her deceased aunt, who "heard voices" when she was alive), these ghosts are merely annoying to her, while Jock’s ghost is persistent and terrifying. This results in her actually murdering him - believing she has only murdered his ghost!

Okay, I know that was a spoiler but throughout the novel there is little mystery about what has happened. However, the psychological tension is maintained throughout, keeping the reader uncertain of what the effects will be on everyone when the truth comes out.

Anne of Avonlea

2003-05-16T22:21:00.000+02:00

By L.M. Montgomery

This is the second book in the series about Anne Shirley and it is just as sweet and wonderful as the first. Anne is now 16 and about to start on her teaching career at the local school in Avonlea. We follow her the first two years of her career and also get to know some of her pupils and their families.

The story pretty much follows the same pattern as the first book and it is so predictable it is not even funny, but that is about the only negative thing I have to say.

After two years of teaching, Anne finally gets the chance to start proper college and study towards her degree. She is, of course, delighted at the opportunity but also saddened at the prospect of leaving her dear home at Green Gables, in the very small community of Avonlea. But, her friend, Gilbert, is going away to college as well, which makes up for some of the homesickness. However, Anne has not yet opened her eyes to Gilbert's interest in her but being students at the same college this might change.

At home Marilla is kept company by the twins, Dora and Davy, and her good neighbour through the years, Rachel Lynde. Rachel has now moved in with Marilla following the death of her husband. Should be interesting to see how they get along...

Past Praying For

2003-05-02T22:28:00.000+02:00

By Aline Templeton

The storyline is very good and it is sad that the author is not able to make more out of it. It is set in the small community of Stretton Noble where Margaret Moon has just taken over as the new vicar. However, what she and the rest of the community, does not know is that the town is hiding a dangerous person. Someone with a split personality goes around at night setting fire to houses. It does not take long before the whole town is engulfed in fear, and when the vicarage is set on fire Margaret Moon just about escapes the flames.

Throughout the novel I was waiting for a surprising twist at the end, but unfortunately the ending is quite straightforward. There is nothing surprising at all here and instead of going down the road less travelled, the author has chosen the safer road, which, unfortunately for the reader, leads to the obvious, and eventually disappointment.

Five Quarters of the Orange

2003-04-14T22:07:00.000+02:00

By Joanne Harris

“When my mother died she left the farm to my brother, Cassis, the fortune in the wine cellar to my sister, Reine-Claude, and to me, the youngest, her album and a two-litre jar containing a single black Périgord truffle, large as a tennis ball, suspended in sunflower oil, that, when uncorked, still releases the rich dank perfume of the forest floor.“

Although the main part of the story takes place in Les Laveuses, a French village occupied by the Germans during World War II, it is not just another war novel. In addition to exposing the ugliness of war from the viewpoint of three neglected children, it is also a mystery and a story of revenge, sexuality and suspense.

First we meet Framboise Dartigan, a crabby old lady recalling the days of her childhood, which happened to coincide with the German Occupation. Their father was killed in World War II, and their mother was always secretive and troubled. The Dartigan-children, (9-year-old Framboise, 14-year-old Cassis and 12-year-old Reine-Claude) are drawn to the neighbouring town of Anger, teaming with Nazis. The children are naturally curious and start talking to a certain German soldier, Tomas Leibnitz, trading secrets about their neighbours in exchange for magazines, sweets and cigarettes. It provides a distraction from their grim home life.

The children’s mother, Mirabella, suffers from intense migraines and violent blackouts and is often bedridden for days. Framboise recalls these nightmarish days with her mother all through the novel. Prior to her terrible migraines, her mother thinks she smells oranges. This is something that Framboise cunningly uses to her advantage. She procures oranges from Tomas and secretes the peel around the house. The scent convinces her mother that she is about to have one of her spells. She takes morphine tablets and takes to her bed, thus leaving the children to their own devices for hours on end. At one time Framboise takes revenge on her mother by planting a cut-up orange near the stove so that the scent fills the house.

We also hear about the local superstition of Old Mother. Old Mother is an ancient pike living in the Loire River. If you catch her she will grant you a wish, but if she catches your eye, you or someone you love will soon die. Framboise takes it upon herself to catch Old Mother. Her determination to do so sets off a chain of events that lead to tragedy.

Another event that stands out is when Framboise nets a dozen snakes, crushes their skulls and leaves them to rot on the riverbanks, after a village girl has been bitten and killed by a venomous snake.

There is also talk of a scandal. A scandal so flagrant that when Framboise returns to her childhood village after an absence of 50 years, she disguises her identity. Through flashbacks it is gradually revealed that the German soldier, Tomas, was the lover of Framboise’s mother. This family secret can be found in her mother's old recipe book, written in between the recipes, sometimes in illegible handwriting and sometimes short paragraphs that do not always make sense. The scandal is also the reason why her family was forced to leave the village 50 years ago.

It is very often only in retrospect that you can really understand the things that happened in your childhood. As a child everything seems either black or white and it can be hard to put things into perspective. To me this is very much what the story is about. From an adult perspective it is also easier for Framboise to understand her mother's side of the story and why she did what she did. To be able to look ahead one must learn to understand the past and let the past remain the past, trying to forgive those that did you wrong.

Houses Without Doors

2003-04-04T10:58:00.000+02:00

By Peter Straub

This is a book of short stories. They include the very short stories She Saw a Young Man, In the Realm of Dreams, Going Home, The Poetry Reading, Bar Talk, The Veteran and Then One Day She Saw Him Again – some of which I almost found too short. There are also a few of more substantial length, Blue Rose, The Juniper Tree, A Short Guide to the City, The Buffalo Hunter, Something about a Death Something About a Fire and Mrs. God.

Out of these short stories my favourites were The Buffalo Hunter, Mrs. God and The Blue Rose, of which the latter I found quite disturbing. All great stories with a special twist, but at the same time also very provocative. The reader is taken beneath the silent surfaces of the everyday world where a realm of mystery lies. It is the type of mystery that can only be reached through imagination, trauma or violence. Welcome to an eerie world of deranged minds and childhood terror, destructive obsession and deadly innocence!

Surprisingly good, although a novel almost too dark and sinister for my liking.

Anne of Green Gables

2003-03-22T11:08:00.000+01:00

By L.M. Montgomery

Anne Shirley is an orphan girl whose big vice is life is her red hair. At the age of 11 she arrives in Avonlea to stay with Matthew and Marilla at Green Gables. They originally wanted to adopt a boy to help them on the farm, but because of a misunderstanding the orphanage sends them a girl.

Both Matthew and Marilla soon take to liking Anne and the house livens up with her constant chatter and lively imagination. She also turns out to be a very bright girl, who does well in school and has an academic career all lined up before her.

The book ends on a sad note, as tragedy strikes at Green Gables and Anne's plans for her future changes. But not all changes are for the worse and knowing Anne she is sure to find a way out and a solution to her new situation.

It is packed with innocence but also great hopes, and the underlying theme of the story is that no matter where you come from and who you are, dreams can come true. A wonderfully funny book that I am sure girls of all ages (and boys too!) will love.

The Tree of Hands

2003-03-11T22:37:00.000+01:00

By Ruth Rendell

Not the best Ruth Rendell novel I have ever read, but still I cannot come up with anything negative to say about it. I love the way she merges several stories, which at first glance seem not to have anything to do with each other, but in the end they all come together so masterfully, and it all makes sense somehow.

First we meet Benet and her young son James. They are at the airport to pick up Benet’s mother. Without going into great detail and without spoiling the ending I think it will be safe to say that little James dies. He is soon replaced by Jay, who Benet not long after discovers her mother has abducted. However, when Benet's mother leaves to go back to Spain where she lives, Benet is determined to return Jay. Despite her good intentions there is always one thing or other to delay her plans of returning him.

We also meet Jay's mother, Carol, and her young boyfriend, Barry, who doesn't exactly live in the lap of luxury. Then there is also Carol's ex-boyfriend, Terence, who is not entirely mama's best boy. He likes to go to funerals but not any kind of funeral. It has to be one where the widow is not too old and not exactly poor. He also tries to sell his current "girl friend's" house while she is away in the Caribbean.

After a while Benet's ex-boyfriend, Edward, also plays a bigger part in the plot of this book. He somehow manages to see through Benet's secret.

I felt like Benet could almost be forgiven for not returning Jay to his mother, and actually felt thankful that she had a mother crazy enough to take this small child out of his misery. It is like she was his guardian angel. It is not very often I feel a sense of relief, and almost a little touch of happiness, after having finished one of Ruth Rendell’s books but this story certainly left me in a good mood.

Tess of the D'Urbervilles

2003-03-03T23:21:00.000+01:00

By Thomas Hardy

Very slow going in the beginning but picks up after a while. However, I found it a little tedious on a few occasion. There are far too many detailed descriptions that could very easily have been left out all together. The style of writing is a little boring as well so at times it is more a chore than a pleasure to keep on reading. On a positive note the idea is okay and Tess does have many emotional complexities and has to face many emotional challenges. It is also interesting to see how her relationship with men changes when she lets her past get the best of her. The ending is surprising as well.

Tess Durbeyfield is the main character of the story. She is the daughter of the poor John Durbeyfield who learns from the village parson that his family is related to ancient nobility, being the last of the family the D’Urbervilles. In trying to make use of this connection Tess’ mother Joan, suggests that Tess pursue the son of the local family of Mrs D’Urberville, Alec D'Urberville. It later turns out the Mrs D’Urberville has merely taken the name for convenience. However, Alec falls in love with Tess and seduces her. They have a child together but the child soon dies. Because the child is illegitimate it cannot be baptised. Tess is told by her mother to never mention the rape or the child to anyone.

After the death of her child, Tess travels to a nearby town to start work on a farm. Here she meets the Reverend Mr Clare and his son Angel. Although she has promised herself never to fall in love again, she finally accepts Angel’s proposal and they get married. On their honeymoon night Tess confesses her dark and mysterious past to Angel, causing him to become jealous since Alec is still alive. He decides to go away until he can forgive Tess and leaves for Brasil. By chance Tess runs into Alec again but this time she refuses to talk to him and tell him of what she has done, something that leads to another attempt on Alec’s part to ensnare Tess.

The story finally ends with murder, escape and superficial impurity on the part of Tess, when she is finally brought to "justice".

The Funhouse

2003-02-07T22:14:00.000+01:00

By Dean Koontz

The plot of this novel centres around carnival life. It starts in August 1955 when Ellen Straker marries the owner of a carnival funhouse, Conrad, after she running away from her repressive mother. She drinks to forget her tormented childhood and to cope with her present. A baby boy is born. They name him Victor, but Ellen cannot bring herself to love this ‘thing’. She thinks it is evil, so it has to die.

From there, the story shifts to Ellen's 17-year-old daughter Amy. Amy is pregnant and totally alone after her uncaring boyfriend dumps her. She desperately wants an abortion, but has no way of paying for it other than using her savings. But in order to do that she will need her mother’s permission to withdraw them. Although a strictly religious and a practising Catholic, Amy’s mother agrees. She even insists that the abortion is the only course of action to be taken and that Amy must get rid of the evil inside her as quickly as possible. After the abortion Amy’s mother wants little to do with her and because she now no longer has any curfews or restrictions, she can finally live her life.

Joey, Amy’s little brother, is not so lucky. His mother is even more protective of him. When the carnival arrives in town one day, he sees it as his way to freedom.

The main attraction of the carnival is Conrad’s Funhouse. It offers the ultimate ride, a thrill to beat all others and an experience of a lifetime. However, it does not take long until Conrad finds Ellen, and even better, her children. He sees an opportunity to revenge Ellen’s murder of his beloved Victor. Therefore Conrad is going to keep his ride open, open for as long as it takes to ensure that special children get just what they deserve.

I have not read many books by Dean Koontz but I felt that this one was not as sinister as the others I have read. Unlike other Koontz novels I have read, the author reveals nearly the entire plot within the first 50 pages and the ending is also rather quick and unsatisfying.

Country Wives

2003-02-02T22:38:00.000+01:00

By Rebecca Shaw

This is the second book in the Barleybridge series about life at Barleybridge Veterinary Hospital. I have to admit I love these books. They are so easy to read, and such fun. Very straightforward and very predictable, but I suppose that is part of the enjoyment.

A new locum, Dan, arrives at Barleybridge. He stirs up things a bit, much to everyone’s annoyance. The wives connected to the practice are determined that something has to be done. However, Dan and Kate soon become friends. He is there for her when her father passes away very unexpectedly and when her birth mother very suddenly enters her life and claims her. Kate is now torn between the love for her stepmother Mia and a need to know her own mother. Dan, with a secret of his own, again helps her through a traumatic period.

A book filled with warmth, humour and predictability.

The Unknown Errors of Our Lives

2003-01-27T10:53:00.000+01:00

By Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

This is a book of short stories spun around the topic of living in a different culture (America) to where you come from (India). It reminded me of why I do not like short stories very much. Once you get to know the characters and start enjoying the story, it is already over. I think this book could have been so much better had it been nine separate novels instead of nine short stories, because all the stories are so beautiful and interesting.

* Mrs Dutta Writes a Letter. The widowed Mrs. Dutta moves from India to the US to stay with her son's family. She tries to adapt to the new country and culture as best she can, but sometimes it is not only cultural differences that can cause problems in a family.

* The Intelligence of Wild Things. A story of a brother and sister who live in different parts of the US. The brother did not at first want to leave India to study in the US, but when their mother takes ill he does not want to return to India to see her.

* The Lives of Strangers. American born Leela goes back to her parents' roots in India where she goes on a pilgrimage. Here she meets a woman who makes a great impression on her.

* The Love of a Good Man. Mona has a hard time forgiving her father but after her mother dies her husband persuades her to let him visit. However, the wounds of the past heal slowly.

* What The Body Knows. The birth of her first child nearly kills Aparna. It takes a young doctor to bring her back to life.

* The Forgotten Children. Two young children dream of a life with more money and a non-abusive father.

* The Blooming Season for Cacti. Mira wants to be independent and leaves her brother and his family to settle in California. She meets a woman with a sad past, who wants to be more than her friend.

* The Unknown Errors of Our Lives. Ruchira used to write down all her mistakes in a notebook. Now that she is about to get married she sees that the biggest mistakes are the ones we do not even know we are making.

* The Names of Stars in Bengali. A young mother goes back to India to visit her mother, bringing along her two sons. Everything is not what it used to be in her village and her boys see things differently than herself. She also gets a shock when her youngest son falls ill and her husband arrives from the US.

Where or When

2003-01-21T11:56:00.000+01:00

By Anita Shreve

This book seemed to be just a mediocre version of another Anita Shreve novel, The Last Time They Met. The stories have so many similarities right down to the two main female characters having spent time in the Peace Corps in Africa. But this story never reaches the heights of The Last Time They Met.

Siân Roberts and Charles Callahan meet for the first time as teenagers at summer camp, where they spend a week together. They are each other’s first love. Thirty years later Charles, now a middle-aged insurance broker, spots a photograph of Siân while leafing through his newspaper's literary supplement. Although married with three daughters Charles writes to Siân, who by now is a published poet, also married and mother of two children. Siân writes back, their correspondence develops into intimacy and they agree to meet again at the scene of their summer camp, now an inn, situated midway between her Pennsylvania onion farm and his Rhode Island seaside town.

Charles chooses to tell his wife about his affair with Siân on Christmas Eve, not the best of times to make that kind of confession. It also turns out that Charles and his family are about to loose their home because of overdue mortgage payments.

Meanwhile tragedy is also lurking for Siân's family. When her husband, who has suspected something is going on, finds a man's shirt in his wife's cupboard he goes to the barn and tries to shoot himself.

This is basically the plot of the story. It totally lacks drive in any direction and all the reader is left with is two people in their mid-40s going back and forth contemplating whether or not they should be together while hurting everyone around them. The ending is also somewhat disappointing. Rather straightforward and boring, and very overly dramatised.

Night Chills

2003-01-14T16:05:00.000+01:00

By Dean Koontz

The plot is very straightforward. A group of three scientists have come up with a devious, horrible experiment for them to take control of the world. They have discovered a way to brainwash people and to open their minds using subliminal ads, and then programme them to do whatever they like. Their experiment is going to take place in the secluded town of Black River, before they move on in order to take over the subconscious minds of every person in the world.

The idea is to introduce subliminal messages in television programmes. It is really quite a frightening thought. You cannot help but wonder if there is something to it. In the book they use it in commercials and ads, and if that is true, well, then I cannot look at another ad for the rest of my life...

So, a drug is placed in the town’s water supply, which is supposed to help make people ‘riper’ for the subliminal messages. Because of this drug many people in the town are plagued by night chills and vomiting. However, obstacles arise for the three scientists when a handful of people do not respond to the drug. Shop owner, Sam, and daughter, Jenny, together with the out-of-towners, Paul (dad), Rya and Mark (daughter and son), are not affected. After a tragic event that unfortunately kills Paul's son Mark, they are able to find out what is going on and set out to save the town of Black River.

Not the best book I have ever read but it definitely makes you look at any kind of media (magazines, television, radio and the Internet) in a different way. Chilling.

The Last Time They Met

2003-01-04T09:34:00.000+01:00

By Anita Shreve

This is the story about Linda and Thomas, who have a lifelong passion for each other even though they only meet three times in their lives, when they are 52, 26 and 17. It is about moments of no return and about missed and retrieved opportunities, time and memory.

The story is told in retrospect starting with the two main characters, Linda and Thomas, meeting at a writer's convention in Toronto when they are 52. They have been in love their entire lives but why they could not have each other is only revealed towards the end of the novel. The novel itself is divided into three parts. Part one and three are told from Linda's standpoint, and part two from Thomas' standpoint.

The character of Thomas is actually not new to this novel. He was also in one of Anita Shreve's other novels, The Weight of Water. It is not essential for this story to have read The Weight of Water beforehand although, if possible, I think I would recommend that you do.

In the second part of the book (the story told from Thomas' viewpoint) Linda and Thomas meet again in Kenya. By now they are both 26 and married, but once they meet again they cannot let go, so they end up spending as much time together as possible, until fate again separates them.

The last, and third, part of the book is the story of how they met. Linda comes from a difficult background and seeks comfort and attention in the arms of Thomas, who is a much more confident and secure person. It turns into love, and a love that is going to be with them for the rest of their lives.

The ending is really surprising because it is not one to be expected. I can understand why some people said they felt cheated by this ending but on the other hand, it can also be seen as giving a whole new perspective to the story. A book a really enjoyed reading.

A Country Affair

2002-12-27T11:09:00.000+01:00

By Rebecca Shaw

This is the first book in the new Rebecca Shaw-series from the Barleybridge Veterinary Hospital. Unlike her Turnham Malpas novels, I did not find this book to be as predictable.

First we meet Kate as she is about to start her first day in her new job as a receptionist at the local veterinary practice. Kate is 19 and has recently finished her A-levels leaving her with two grade A's and a C in chemistry. It is the C that prevents her from entering college to become a vet, something she has dreamt of for a long time. Working in a veterinary practice is therefore the next best thing for her. It is not long until her new job has given her a boost of confidence and she is able to break out of her two-year relationship with boyfriend Adam. He wants them to get married and does not like the idea of Kate going off to college to study and have a career. It all turns ugly for a while and Kate seeks comfort and protection in the arms of Aussie vet, Scott. He gives her the confidence she needs to try and do something about her C in chemistry, so that she can get the A required to enrol in veterinary college.

It is all a very idyllic story with a few twists and turns but being the first book in the series, the ending still leaves the reader with many unanswered questions. Rebecca Shaw writes in such a way that you cannot help but feel for the characters and wish them well. Based on the first book I think this series might turn out better than her Tales from Turnham Malpas, though it is still very early days yet.

Diary of a Mad Bride

2002-12-22T23:00:00.000+01:00

By Laura Wolf

A funny little novel all about the hysteria that comes with planning a wedding. Amy has swore she would never marry but a girl is allowed to change her mind, is she not?!?

Amy has seen her friends plan weddings and get married, but cannot understand what all the fuss is about. That is, until her long time boyfriend, Stephen, all of a sudden proposes her - and in the concession line at a movie theater, of all places. It does not take long until Amy is also wrapped up in pre-marital hysteria. Planning a wedding on a low budget is not going to be an easy ride in the park, not to mention finding the right shoes, which seems nearly impossible...

A very funny novel, which I am sure any bride can relate to. If you are a bride-to-be or maybe thinking of getting married, this book might change your mind. As the title indicates, it is a diary and is therefore also written in the form of a diary, not that it matters because the story is still hilarious! True chicklit at its best.

Animal Husbandry

2002-12-17T23:09:00.000+01:00

By Laura Zigman

After having been dumped numerous times by men, Jane Goodall comes up with the New Cow-Old Cow theory: New Cow is short for New-Cow Theory; which is short for Old Cow-New Cow Theory, which, of course, is short for the sad, sorry truth that men leave women and never come back because all they really want is New Cow.

This is basically an all-men-are-bastards book, with plenty of examples of men dumping women and all the excuses they come up. For any woman who has been dumped this must be a very therapeutic book to read. It is very light reading and perfect when on a plane (like I was for half of this book) or in any other surrounding when absolute concentration is not required. Okay reading but nothing more.

The Two Towers

2002-12-11T22:51:00.000+01:00

By J.R.R. Tolkien

I am not sure why, but I liked this part of the story better than the first one, maybe because I had some difficulty grasping the plot while reading the first book. There were so many characters and at some point I think I just lost track of them all for a while. However, now that I have seen the first movie, I have more points of reference and so it was not too hard for me to keep track of all the characters this time round. Normally I do not have this problem when reading, but somehow this very complex story (in my mind anyway) made me lose track of everyone…

Like in the first book, so much happens also in the second part that it is almost impossible to write a short summary. Nonetheless, I suppose Frodo and Sam journey towards for Mordor is worth mentioning, as well as Boromir dying while he tries to stop a band of orcs from kidnapping Merry and Pippin, and Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli, who travel into the land of Rohan to pursue the Orcs. It is on this journey that Aragorn meets an old man, who turns out to be Gandalf whom they all had assumed dead after his fall in Moria.

I think my favourite moment in this book was when Merry and Pippin met Treebeard, an ent who is so enraged by their tale of the evils around that he gathers the other ents to rouse the forest and attack Isengard.

On their journey towards Mordor, Frodo and Sam find Gollum, a creature who once bore the Ring, and who has been following them for some time. Frodo and Sam force him to lead them into Mordor. After a long and gruelling journey they finally arrive at the gates of Mordor. However, Gollum leads them up a seemingly endless staircase and into a secret tunnel where he abandons them and where they are attacked by a spider-like beast. Sam eventually beats the creature away but finds that Frodo is no longer breathing. He takes the Ring to continue on with the quest on his own, while Frodo, who appears to be dead, is carried away by Orcs.

Ohhh… Very exciting ending here, especially since Frodo really is not dead. The poison injected in him by the spider-like beast only makes the victim appear dead, so now it only remains to see if he will be able to escape the Orcs…

Hm… I think I am on the way to becoming a fan here, as I cannot wait to see what the next, and last, chapter of this story has to offer.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

2002-11-26T11:00:00.000+01:00

By J.K. Rowling

In the company of Harry Potter and friends there can never be a dull moment. This is the fourth book and, consequently, Harry is in his fourth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

As always, it is summer holidays when we meet Harry again. It has been another long and horrible summer in the company of his aunt, uncle and cousin, Dudley. However, there are things to look forward to. The last couple of weeks of the summer holidays Harry goes to visit his friend Ron Weasley, and he also gets to go to the Quidditch World Cup final, a first for Harry. The Quidditch World Cup is a big thing in the wizardry world.

Back at school Harry is chosen against his wishes, and through mysterious circumstances, to compete in the Triwizard Tournament, although he really is too young to participate. In the Triwizard Tournament he has to solve three very difficult tasks, which in the end leads him face to face with the Lord of Darkness, where the power of evil has to fight the good. Lord Voldemort also returns with plans to kill Harry. On top of all this, Harry is still trying to be a normal, fourteen-year-old wizard, and in this book he also experiences his first crush.

This is definitely a more "grown" version of Harry Potter. I thought the plot had a very dark and sinister twist to it, but is nevertheless, my favourite Harry Potter book to date. I am definitely bitten by the Harry Potter bug, so am eagerly awaiting the release of the next book. You are definitely never too old for the adventures of Harry Potter and friends!

Silent Playgrounds

2002-11-03T19:59:00.000+01:00

By Danuta Reah

“The wheel lurked low down in a narrow pit. She could see the bucket boards that caught the water and turned it – empty now, but damp and mossy. She leaned over the wall and peered down into the darkness that housed the wheel. The sluice that held back the water was above her, and below her was damp stone and moss. An opaque reflection gleamed back at her. She waved, and her reflection waved back. A smell of stagnant water drifted up. She shivered. It had the darkness of a place that never got the sun.”

The first half of this book is very slow going but do not despair, it gets better as the story progresses and eventually culminates in a tense climatic ending, well worth waiting for. It is a typical police detective story, not the greatest detective story ever, but can be recommended nonetheless.

The plot goes something like this. Six-year-old Lucy goes missing. A body of a young woman, who happens to be Lucy’s babysitter, Emma, is found in a park nearby. Not long after, another dead woman’s body found in exactly the same place. Lucy, now safely at home, tells stories of monsters in the park that are getting closer. It is up to DI Steve McCarthy to find these monsters and solve the case.

Dating Big Bird

2002-10-17T20:17:00.000+02:00

By Laura Zigman

This book is very Bridget Jones meets Sex and the City. In other words, women in their 30’s looking for Mr. Right.

Dating Big Bird is full of overly desperate 30-something woman who needs and wants a man TODAY! Ellen Franck is one of them. She is 35, loves her niece to bits and cannot wait to have a child of her own. Only problem is, she has no man in her life - at least not one who is willing to commit and actually be a father to her child. Ellen does not let this get her down. She knows that she does not want to be alone for the rest of her life, so she leaves her well-paid job in the New York’s fashion industry to join the latest fashion on the baby front; artificial insemination.

A well written book and a good read for women in all stages of life.

My Story, My Dream

2002-10-13T13:41:00.000+02:00

By Celine Dion & Georges-Hérbert Germain

This is the life of superstar Celine Dion from her childhood in Charlemagne, Canada, to the conception of her first child. It is a peak behind the curtains and a chance to hear Celine’s side of the story.

A very emotional story and definitely one of the better biographies I have read. In this book the reader truly gets to know the woman Celine Dion, and not just the star.

The Lake of Darkness

2002-10-09T13:52:00.000+02:00

By Ruth Rendell

Martin Urban wins a lot of money on the pools and decides to spend some of his winnings on helping other people. Everything goes as planned until he decides to help his family's former maid, Mrs. Finn. Her son is certain that the money is not meant for buying his mother a new house but for something a lot more sinister.

At the same time Martin falls in love with Francesca, who turns out to be married with a small daughter. Martin buys her a flat so that she can move away from her husband and be with him. At least that was Martin's intention, but things take a totally different turn for both him and Francesca.

Yet another thrilling page-turner from Ruth Rendell!

Talk of the Village

2002-09-27T22:28:00.000+02:00

By Rebecca Shaw

This is the second book Rebecca Shaw’s Turnham Malpas-series. It is an extremely straightforward and predictable story but, nevertheless, very enjoyable, about everyday life in a small English village.

In this book the truth about the rector's twins come out. There is also an incident of a child going missing, and of course there are some newcomers to the village. Will they adjust to village life?

Ghost Children

2002-09-01T22:30:00.000+02:00

By Sue Townsend

This book has two separate stories that cross each other a couple of times, before they merge into one.We meet Christopher and Angela. They were once in love but when Angela got pregnant and had an abortion, they both drifted apart. Seventeen years later they meet again and although their outside appearances have changed, the way they once felt about each other has not.

Then there is Crackle and Tamara, and their 14-month old daughter, Storme, who live in a dirty council flat. Crackle is unemployed and on crack. Tamara is young and innocent, without an education, totally in love with Crackle. They are unable to take care of their daughter and one day she ends up in hospital with severe head injuries.

All the main characters in this book have somehow fallen outside of society, and Sue Townsend does a great job describing their lives, which are both filled with happiness and despair. She has such a keen eye for humour among everyday life that this book is definitely not a depressing read.