Category: secrets

Fayne – Ann-Marie MacDonald

Full disclosure: this sweeping sage is long (722 pages) but Ms. MacDonald’s exquisite writing makes the reading very worthwhile. The setting: Fayne, an estate straddling the border between England and Scotland. The time: late 19th century. The main players: Lord Henry Bell and wife Mae, and children Charles and Charlotte. The story is rife with family secrets, with cruelty and cowardice in male-female and father-child relationships. A shifting timeline accentuates the drama: highly recommended. 

PS: A-MM wrote the wonderful Fall On Your Knees a long time ago.

Homecoming – Kate Morton

In 2018, Jess is an almost 40-year-old who returns to Australia because her elderly grandmother Nora has been hospitalized after a serious fall. At Nora’s house, Jess learns about the Turner Family Tragedy of 1959: the death of Nora’s sister-in-law and her three children in South Australia. Is this a murder-suicide by a distraught mother? What are the family lies designed to protect the ones we love? The story becomes an exciting crime drama that is a compelling read.

My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry – Fredrik Backman

Elsa is a precocious almost 8-year-old who is perceived as different and thus bullied at school. Thankfully, she has a very close relationship with her 77-year-old grandmother who tells her mythical stories about the Land-of-Almost-Awake. When Elsa’s grandmother dies, Elsa receives a series of apology letters that she is directed to deliver, and so Elsa learns about her grandmother’s incredible back story. This is a brilliant book about life and death, with inspired comic moments and deeply sentimental sad situations, so both laughs and tears abound.

Humans of New York City Stories – Brandon Stanton

This is a remarkable book of street photography coupled with brief but insightful narratives from interviews with the subjects. The photos are outstanding but the narratives, the comments, are sometimes astonishingly candid. Comments range from the unbridled optimism of children to introspective insights from adults regarding loneliness and isolation that may include mental illness. This is a riveting book for NY-philes. Thanks Sarah, for giving me this book.

Exit – Belinda Bauer

Felix, a 75-year-old widower in SW England, is an Exiter, someone who offers companionship to terminally ill people who have chosen to die by suicide. His role is entirely passive, to lend moral support and then remove the evidence to not distress family and loved ones. But this act of kindness and charity goes off the rails with a terrible mistake when the wrong person dies. But what if this fatal mistake was a set-up to enable a murder? A wondaful treatise on aging with some seriously funny moments.

A Town Called Solace – Mary Lawson

Clara, age 7, lives in Northern Ontario. It is 1972 and Clara has two responsibilities: to keep vigil for her runaway 16-year-old sister and to look after the cat in her neighbour’s house while Mrs. Orchard is in hospital. But then a strange man occupies Mrs. Orchard’s house! Three distinct storylines emerge, each with differing timelines, But this is Clara’s story: fear, love, resilience, a child’s imagination when truth is withheld. Lawson is a literary master; her previous book Crow Lake is equally compelling.

Piranesi – Suzanna Clarke

Ms. Clarke previously wrote the highly acclaimed Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell (2004). In this new book, Piranesi lives in a house with infinite rooms and corridors lined with statues, a house that is a labyrinth, a massive world with its internal weather. Only one other person seems to live in this house, The Other. When evidence of other people emerges, Piranesi questions his strange hypnotic reality. This is a fantastic tour-de-force of storytelling: a mystery and adventure, meditations on feeling lost and being found. This book is a treasure of imagination.

The Trouble with Goats and Sheep – Joanna Cannon

It is an extraordinarily hot summer in England in 1976, and someone has gone missing from a suburban avenue. Two 10-year-old girls, Grace and Tilly,  begin a dual search for the missing person and for God (based on a misunderstanding of a Vicar’s sermon). Secrets emerge about a tragic event 10 years previous – is this linked to the disappearance? This is an evocative coming-of-age story that is also about a community in need of absolution. Cannon’s writing is wonderfully descriptive: “carpet the colour of cough syrup”. Overall, a moving and perceptive story – highly recommended. Thanks Joyce, for telling me about this book.