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.
September 2013
Notable titles:
- Winter’s End by Mark Helprin;
- The Ocean At The End Of The Lane by Neil Gaiman;
- Old Filth by Jane Gardam.
August 2013
Double Fault by Lionel Shriver;
And The Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
July 2013
- Majorr. Pettigrew’s Last Stand – Helen Simonson (very British story of honour and duty, unrequited love, racism and sexism …)
- The Boy In The Striped Pajamas – John Boyne (the tragedy of the holocaust from the contrasting viewpoints of two nine year-old boys)
- Behind The Scenes At The Museum – Kate Atkinson (her first book, excellent story-telling, both funny and sad; another “bad mother” book cf. Silver Star)
- The Painted Girls – Cathy Marie Buchanan (1880s Paris, three sisters and a dissolute single mother; one sister joins the ballet and is the model for Edgar Degas’ “Little Dancer Age 14”. A hard life)
April 2013
- Lionel Asbo (Martin Amis);
- Bone and Bread (Saleema Nawaz; complex relationship between sisters in a story set mostly in Montreal’s Mile End);
- How To Be A Woman (Caitlin Moran; stories about growing up in England, alternating between hysterically funny and insightful/poignant);
- The Tiny Wife (Andrew Kaufman; only 85 small pages but such an imagination)
March 2013
Y by Marjorie Celona (sad story of a child abandoned after birth and left at the YMCA in Victoria; her life in foster care and the back story of her mother and the events that led to the abandonment);
Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante (mystery involving a murder with the chief suspect being someone who is slipping into dementia).
February 2013
Impostor Bride by Nancy Richler
Best of 2012
- Night Circus (Erin Morgenstern): magic and reality are integrated
- The Informationist (Taylor Stevens): excellent adventure/mystery; intriguing central character; set in Africa
- 1Q84 (Haruki Murakami): outstanding; real imagination
- Dancing Lessons (Olive Senior): really excellent; introspection into roles as woman/wife/mother; failure to communicate; perception/reality
- Something Fierce (Carmen Aguirre): Giller winner; emotional cost of being a child of revolutionary parents in South America
- The Art of Fielding (Chad Harbach): baseball as a metaphor for guy relationships and the pursuit of perfection
- Canada (Richard Ford): excellent
- By Blood (Ellen Ullman): really interesting book about identity, adoption, Jewish heritage
- Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn): really excellent psychological who-dunnit; best book in 2012
- Hanging Hill (Mo Hayder): excellent murder mystery set in Bath and SW England
- Defending Jacob (William Landay): legal thriller, about the possibility that a son is evil; really excellent
December 2012
Defending Jacob (William Landay);
My Life (Alice Munro).
What David Read 