Ms. Rooney’s new book is about four 30-year-olds: Alice and Eileen, Simon and Felix. Although older than the teenagers in Normal People, these adults are no more successful in their relationships. Despite deep friendships and yes, love, they can be frustratingly emotionally distant, deflecting a question with a question as the rejoinder. Overall, a fabulous examination of the modern world. Desire is complicated with delusion; perceptions of happiness are clouded by anxiety and uncertainty. A brilliant book – highly recommended.
Category: must read
Surfacing – Margaret Atwood
An early Atwood treasure from the 1970s with beautiful descriptive writing – this description off a restaurant meal is on page 1: “two restaurants which served identical grey hamburger steaks plastered with mud gravy and canned peas, watery and pallid as fish eyes, and french fries heavy with lard”. Is your mouth watering? The narrator is an un-named young woman who travels to a remote lake in Northern Quebec with three friends, to seek her missing father. There is an eerily effective transition to sinister happenings, but the true gem of the writing is the unfiltered dialog in the narrator’s head: this story is both spooky and brilliant, a must read.
Starlight – Richard Wagamese
This is the continuing story of Frank Starlight. Much of the story is quiet and contemplative, describing how to live as one with the land through solitude and your senses (sight, hearing). The result is healing and redemption, expressed in two very different lives. The story was unfinished at the time of Wagamese’s death in March 2017 but the conclusion is evident. This is just masterful story-telling, a final fitting legacy for a remarkable author.
What David Read 