A Danish writer has produced a melancholy story about a father/son relationship. The story has an interesting mix of moral behaviour juxtaposed with illegal activities. This book is a great example of how children can be infinitely accommodating to their parents odd behaviour.
Category: family
The Weird Sisters – Eleanor Brown
This is a magnificent story about 3 sisters reunited in Ohio because of a parental health issue. The book is dominated by Shakespearean quotes and references: the names of the 3 sisters are Rosalind (Rose), Bianca (Bean) and Cordelia (Cordy). The story is about sister relationships and all three are fuck-ups in their own unique fashion. And may I mention that everyone loves to read in this story. Finally, the book is written in an interesting collective voice of all thee sisters (We …). This is a must-read book.
The Romantic – Barbara Gowdy
A beautifully written complicated love story: a child searching for love after being abandoned by her mother, and falling in love with a neighbour boy who can’t reciprocate what is for her an obsessive love.
Falling Angels by Barbara Gowdy
Another dysfunctional family book with abusive father, an alcoholic mother who dropped/threw a child into Niagara Falls (postpartum depression?) and three sisters who are the focus (how children cope). There is a chapter entitled Disneyland which is superb black humour; the next chapter is heartbreaking. Gowdy also wrote Fearless about a 9 year old girl who is abducted; the abductor is delusional and obsessed but amazingly becomes somewhat sympathetic because he tries to suppress his pedophilic tendencies. Both these books are tough reads but excellent.
What David Read 