Translated from German by Michael HofmannPublished by Granta, 2017, 140 pages. Original version published in 2016. What happens when a man walks out of his seemingly perfect life? Thomas and Astrid live in a village in northern Switzerland. Thomas has a steady job, they have two children, a nice house and a marriage that seems …
Behold the Dreamers: Imbolo Mbue
Published by Penguin / HarperCollins / Fourth Estate, 2017, 400 pages. How many people have travelled to the United States over the centuries, hoping to live the American dream? It is the Holy Grail for so many, and often as unattainable as the pot of gold at the rainbow’s end. Jende Jonga and his wife …
Harilal & Sons: Sujit Saraf
Published by Speaking Tiger, 2017, 528 pages. Beginning in 1899 when India was still under British rule, this sprawling narrative takes us through the country’s independence and partition in 1947 and ends in 1972, following the creation of Bangladesh. At the centre of the story is Harilal, a Marwari[1] merchant. When the story opens, Harilal …
Into the Water: Paula Hawkins
Published by Doubleday / Black Swan, 2017, 448 pages. “There are people who are drawn to water, who retain some vestigial, primal sense of where it flows. I believe I am one of them. I am most alive when I am near the water, when I am near this water.” Nel Abbott was fascinated by …
Shadowless: Hasan Ali Toptas
Translated from Turkish by Maureen Freely and John AnglissPublished by Bloomsbury, 2017, 320 pages. Original version published in 1995. I am honestly not sure what to make of this strange, hallucinatory book. Reading it is like wandering into a dream where not everything makes sense. In spite of its title, it is full of shadows …
My Name is Lucy Barton: Elizabeth Strout
Published by Penguin Random House, 2016, 208 pages. A woman in a hospital in New York turns from the window to find her estranged mother sitting by her bed. Over the next five days they talk, remembering people they both knew and reestablishing forgotten connections. Then as abruptly as she came, the mother leaves. The …
Women Travellers Tell their Stories
Think of all the travel books that you have read: how many of them are written by men? Almost all? And yet women have been travelling and writing about it for as long as men. As a reviewer for the website, Women on the Road, I have spent the last few years reading these books. …
City on Fire: Garth Risk Hallberg
Published by Knopf, 2015, 944 pages. An ambitious debut, City on Fire paints a portrait of New York in the 60s and 70s, following a group of people as they try to make (or unmake) their lives in the city. The book begins during Christmas 1976/New Year 1977. It is the time of punk and …
Listening to the Writer’s Voice
I'm looking at close to half an hour of standing over the stove, staring into a pot as I stir, maybe stepping away for a few seconds at a time to check on this or that, open the refrigerator and put something away, or just look out the window. I block out the impatient honks …
Paper Towns: John Green
Published by Bloomsbury / Dutton Books, 2008, 320 pages. “The way I figure it, everyone gets a miracle. … My miracle was this: in all the houses of all the subdivisions in all of Florida, I ended up living next door to Margo Roth Spiegelman.” The book is narrated by Quentin Jacobsen, a 17-year-old close …
Talking About Books 