A brilliant story about a 28 year-old woman who flees her husband and her NY life, to go to New Zealand. She continues to be lost. The writing is amazing, long disjointed sentences to mirror her aimless thoughts. And the ending is intriguing.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18490560-nobody-is-ever-missing
Henrietta is a black woman who develops cervical cancer in 1951. Without her knowledge or consent, some cancerous tissue is removed during radium treatments of her cancer, and this tissue become the first immortal cell line (cells maintained in culture forever). The cells were named HeLa cells after the first two letters of her first and last name. The book meticulously details the subsequent exploitation of Henrietta and her family, at a time when the ethics of human experimentation was not considered. An excellent historical story of exploitation and racism.
This is the story of two women in the early 1800s in Lyme Regis England. They are both fossil hunters and remarkable finders, but this is in the era before extinction is proposed, and the issues of taking women seriously is paramount. A very good read. (thanks Thea).
This is the second book about Cormoran Strike, a hard-boiled private investigator in the Mickey Spillane mode. This book is set in the vicious world of publishing. Excellent plot with ongoing development of the relationship between Cormoran and his trusty secretary, Robin. The story takes place in London, and you can feel the cold of an English winter.
Excellent first book about the ravages of dementia, about Maud (mid 80s) with short-term memory loss (What am I doing? Where am I going?) with retention of long-term memory (disappearance of an elder sister after WWII). The exasperation of her daughter and other care-givers is vivid.
Another book from the CBC list; also Whittall was at a Walrus Talks panel discussion at Blue Metropolis. This is a relationship book about 20-somethings that is not preoccupied by drugs. Notably, there is a central trans-gender character, and this characteristic is treated without emphasis, just as it should be.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6606825-holding-still-for-as-long-as-possible?from_search=true
This is a great book, really two love stories spanning two generations set in North Borneo (WWII, now Malaysia), Vancouver and The Netherlands. It is a compelling story of secrets and sorrows of the past, and grief and loss (a phrase: “ routine .. to keep their thoughts contained”). This may be the only time I have recommended two books by the same author in a single month.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/474662.Certainty?from_search=true
A fierce story of Mala, a multi-layered individual: fiercely protective of her sister after her mother leaves; driven to murder by sexual abuse by her father; an interesting issue of her sanity when she is institutionalized. A book filled with vivid characters. (This is also on the CBC list; last month I recommended Valmiki’s Daughter)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/111653.Cereus_Blooms_at_Night?from_search=true
This is a heartbreaking story of Cambodia in the 1970s, horrors that persist two decades later in Canada. A haunting phrase: “Hunger was erasing my being”; reality becomes blurred in such horrible circumstances. Thien was at Blue Metropolis last May in Montreal.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10129122-dogs-at-the-perimeter
