Translated from Japanese by Stephen SnyderPublished by Vintage, 2019, 288 pages. Original version published in 1994. “‘Things go on disappearing, one by one. … It doesn’t hurt, and you won’t even be particularly sad. One morning you’ll simply wake up and it will be over, before you’ve even realized. … People gather in little groups …
No Place to Call Home—Love, Loss, Belonging: J.J. Bola
Published by OWN IT!, 2017, 336 pages. “And in the end, we are all looking for the same place: somewhere to call home. Home is somewhere we know, somewhere we trust. … Home is where your heart is, home is where you rest your head, home is where you never feel alone. For me, there …
Continue reading No Place to Call Home—Love, Loss, Belonging: J.J. Bola
Beyond the Rice Fields: Naivo
Translated from French by Allison M. CharrettePublished by Restless Books, 2017, 500 pages. Original version published in 2016. This is the first novel from Madagascar to be translated into English. It tells the story of Rafa, a young woman, and Tsito, the boy her father buys her for a slave. Their relationship is closer than …
The Ruins of Time: Ben Woolfenden
Published by Corgi / Black Swan, 1992, 256 pages. “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?” This quote by Marcus Tullius Cicero sets …
Where the Crawdads Sing: Delia Owens
Published by Corsair, 2018, 384 pages. “Marsh is not swamp. Marsh is a space of light, where grass grows in water, and water flows into the sky. Slow-moving creeks wander, carrying the orb of the sun with them to the sea… . Then within the marsh…true swamp crawls into low-lying bogs, hidden in clammy forests. Swamp …
Babylon: Yasmina Reza
Translated from French by Linda AsherPublished by Seven Stories Press, 2018, 208 pages. Original version published in 2016. “The world isn’t tidy. It’s a mess. I don’t try to make it neat.” This epigraph from Garry Winograd, an American street photographer, opens the book. The story is narrated by Elisabeth, a sixty-year-old woman looking back …
The Emperor of Ocean Park: Stephen L. Carter
Published by Vintage, 2002, 672 pages. When Oliver Garland, a well-respected judge, dies—ostensibly of a heart attack—his daughter, Mariah, suspects foul play. Her brother, Tal, a professor of law at a university, is sceptical. Oliver (whom Tal refers to as The Judge) was tipped to a Supreme Court judge, one of the two black judges. …
Continue reading The Emperor of Ocean Park: Stephen L. Carter
Beauty is a Wound: Eka Kurniawan
Translated from Indonesian by Annie TuckerPublished by Pushkin Press, 2016, 480 pages. Original version published in 2002. “One afternoon on a weekend in March, Dewi Ayu rose from her grave after being dead for twenty-one years. … She had passed away at fifty-two, rose again after being dead for twenty-one years, and from that point …
A Man Called Ove: Fredrick Backman
Translated from Swedish by Henning KochPublished by Washington Square Press, 2014, 320 pages. Original version published in 2012. “Ove is fifty-nine. He drives a Saab. He’s the kind of man who points at people he doesn’t like the look of, as if they were burglars and his finger a policeman’s flashlight.” When we meet him, …
A Haunted House and Other Stories: Virginia Woolf
Published by Vintage, 1944, 336 pages. I haven’t read Virginia Woolf for decades, and I had forgotten just how well she writes. I had bought this collection of her short stories in the 1980s, and it was one of the many books I had left behind in my parents’ house when I moved. It has …
Continue reading A Haunted House and Other Stories: Virginia Woolf
Talking About Books 