The Vegetarian by Han Kang, translated from Korean by Deborah Smith / The Summer Book by Tove Jansson, translated from Swedish by Thomas Teal / The Three Daughters of Eve by Elif Shafak / The Black Box by Alek Popov, translated from Bulgarian by Daniella and Charles Edward Gill de Mayol de LupePublishing details belowReview …
Category: Fiction
Brick Lane: Monica Ali
Published by Doubleday / Black Swan, 2003, 416 pages. A portrait of the Bangladeshi community in London, Brick Lane follows Nazneen, a young girl from a village in Bangladesh who is married off to Chanu, an older Bangladeshi man, and moves with him to the UK. During her early years in London, Nazneen’s world is …
A Long Way Down: Nick Hornby
Published by Viking / Penguin / Riverhead, 2005, 272 pages. New Year’s Eve, London, Toppers’ Block, named for the number of people who commit suicide by jumping off the roof. Martin, a disgraced TV presenter, has decided to end his life. He is ready for the job—he has brought a stepladder and wire cutters to …
Dark Fire: C.J. Sansom
Published by Pan / Penguin, 2005, 512 pages. When I mentioned to a friend that I enjoyed Susanna Gregory’s medieval whodunits, she lent me the entire series of novels set during the time of Henry VIII with a hunchback lawyer, Matthew Shardlake, as the main character. Having just finished the first one (although strictly speaking, …
Italian Shoes: Henning Mankell
Translated from Swedish by Laurie ThompsonPublished by Vintage, 2009, 247 pages. Original version published in 2006.Review by Susanne Karine Gjønnes We find an aging man, living by himself on a Swedish island, where he has been in solitude since his retirement 12 years back. Once, he made a mistake he regrets so badly he has …
The Glorious Heresies: Lisa McInerney
Published by John Murray, 2015, 384 pages. An intruder breaks into Maureen Phelan’s apartment. Without thinking, she brains him with a Holy Stone, a religious relic. Worrying over the dead body and the blood seeping into the grout on the kitchen floor, she calls her son James, a gangster, to deal with the mess. James …
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child—JK Rowling, John Thorne and John Tiffany
Published by Sphere, 2016, 352 pages. So you thought we’d come to the end of the Harry Potter story…well, think again. JK Rowling, with some help this time, has written another instalment. This one takes place 19 years after the events of the last Potter book, and the plot revolves around Harry’s second son, Albus …
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A Passion in the Desert: Thomas E. Kennedy
Published by Wordcraft of Oregon, 2007, 192 pages. The title of this book is borrowed from a story by Balzac about betrayal and mistrust, two threads running through the book. The third is love, with all its inadequacies and flaws. Fred Twomey is a creative writing professor, married with two sons. He has a reasonably …
The Neapolitan Novels: Elena Ferrante
Translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein(Publishing details at the end.)Review by Tom Peak The Neapolitan Novels, Elena Ferrante’s four-piece masterwork, is rightly the literary sensation of its time. The epic narrative, sweeping over decades, gallivanting across the life of a neighbourhood—a city—a country—an epoch, rummaging through the lives of the two protagonists, a pair locked …
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell: Susanna Clarke
Published by Bloomsbury Publishing, 2004, 782 pages. England, early 1800s. The country is at war with France under Napolean. Magic—the practical kind, anyway—has not been seen in the land for hundreds of years. The only magicians left are theoreticians, men who had never caused a “leaf to tremble upon a tree or made one mote …
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