The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro
ISBN: 057122539X See also: Jabberwock ; Fantastic Metropolis Surreal and weird are terms that come to mind when I attempt to review this book. Or to be even more accurate, very...
30 December 2007
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
My name is Kathy H. I’m thirty-one years old, and I’ve been a carer now for over eleven years. That sounds long enough, I know, but actually they want me to go on for another eight months, until the end of this year.
I picked this upon impulse. At home, looking for something for the train, I recognised the author’s name and thought that I may as well give it a go. And I’m so glad I did because I loved this book. The narrator is Kathy H., a 31 year old woman, and the book is her memories of life at boarding school. She and other students lived at Hailsham where they were taught by the “guardians” and brought up in a privileged manner. But all is not as it seems and throughout the novels there are hints at something darker.
9 October 2007
The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien
ISBN: 0586087494 See also: Scriptorium ; Ted’s Thoughts Not everyone knows how I killed old Phillip Mathers, smashing his jaw with my spade; but first it is better to speak of...
15 April 2007
The Memory of Running by Ron McLarty
ISBN: 0751537365 RonMcLarty.com; Penguin Guide This is an odd book. On the one hand I quite enjoyed it while reading it, but it never made for compelling reading, and I often...
11 September 2006
We need to talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver
ISBN: 1852424672 Orange Prize winner 2005; The Guardian Just before his 16th birthday Kevin Khatchadourian murders 9 people; 7 students at his high school, a teacher and a worker in the...
25 August 2006
Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel
Travelling: the dank oily days after Christmas. The motorway, its wastes looping London: the margin’s scrub-grass flaring orange in the lights, and the leaves of the poisoned shrubs striped yellow-green like a cantaloupe melon.
3 March 2006
The Case of the Missing Books by Iain Sansom
blockquote>No. No, no, no, no, no. This was not what was supposed to happen
Israel Armstrong has left England, and a job in a discount bookshop, for a job as a librarian in Northern Ireland. Slightly overweight, Jewish and vegetarian, he really doesn’t seem to fit in. And lets not mention that the library job he was hired to fill doesn’t seem to exist any more as the library has been closed. Instead the council want him to run the mobile library. But there is problem there too; it seems that the stock of in and around fifteen thousand books has gone missing.
19 February 2006
where we once belonged by Sia Figiel
ISBN: 0241139295 Set in Samoa where we once belonged is the coming of age story of Alofa, a 13 year old girl growing up in the village of Malaefou. I wrote...
19 October 2005
Tatty by Christine Dwyer Hickey
I really liked this book. The writing was simple and straight-forward but wonderful. Dwyer Hickey makes Tatty, the character, come alive, and gives her a voice of her own. A voice...
27 May 2005
Songdogs by Colum McCann
Sondogs is the tale of seven days in the life of Conor, he has come home to see his father while getting a visa for his return to the states. He...
26 April 2005
Death of an Ordinary Man by Glen Duncan
ISBN: 0743252276 Nathan is dead. Only problem is that he doesn’t really know what’s going on. He is stuck with his family, trying to fill in the holes in his memories,...
14 July 2004
Love Remains by Glen Duncan
Have just finished reading Glan Duncan’s Love Remains. Saw it in my local library and because I loved I, Lucifer so much had to take it out. This is a very...
23 November 2003
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