Posted by: Fence in Books
Author: Charles De Lint
ISBN: 0330339591 DDC: 813.54
Once Upon a Time Challenge
LibraryThing : More reviews
Katherine Mulley had been dead for five years and two months, the morning Isabelle received the letter from her.
I’ve read a few of De Lint’s books in recent years (and how old does typing that make me feel) but I think this may be my favourite so far. It tells the story of Isabelle Copley, an artist who has, in many ways, retreated from the world to live in isolation on an island, and the beings her paintings breathe life into. The story takes place over twenty years, and a lot is told through flashbacks, as well as the odd journal entry. The majority of the story we see through Isabelle’s eyes (though not in first person), but there are few others who have bits and pieces to tell us as well. The use of flashbacks and these different narrators means that the reader is never sure what happened in the past. Important events seem so different depending on the character, but it never gets so frustrating that I wanted the author to have used a different story-telling device.
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'verse,
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Charles De Lint,
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Newford,
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Posted by: Fence in Books
Author: Rohinton Mistry
ISBN: 057123058x DDC: 813.54
See Also: LibraryThing ; Oprah’s Discussion ; BlogCritics ; Simon and Janet’s blog
Dina Dalal seldom indulged in looking back at her life with regret or bitterness, or questioning why things had turned out the way the way they had, cheating her of the bright future everyone had predicted for her when she was in school, when her name was still Dina Shroff.
I’m not really sure where to begin with this review. This is a big book, both in the amount of pages and in the amount of ground it covers. Set in an un-named city in India during the State of Emergency after India’s founding it deals with four main characters whose lives intersect in the house of Dina Dalal who hires two tailors and rents out a room to a young student in an attempt to keep her independence.
Each character gets a chance to backtrack and tell their story; Dina’s is one of love and then grief as her husband is killed in a road accident, and then of her desire to remain independent of her over-bearing older brother. Ishvar and Om are two Hindi tailors who have travelled to the city to make their fortune and escape the caste system of their home village. Maneck is the student lodger whose family lost much of their fortune during the Partition.
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1970s,
813.54,
9 Stars,
A Fine Balance,
Booker Prize nominee,
corruption,
historical fiction,
India,
India - 1970s,
Oprah pick,
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Rohinton Mistry,
sterilization
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Posted by: Fence in Books
Author: Elizabeth Cook
ISBN: 0413771393 DDC: 813.54
Read for the Once Upon a Time Challenge
See also: LibraryThing ; John Sledge ; Brief author bio
Two rivers. Flowing in contrary directions.
Two layers of water, each moving steadily, separate and self-possessed.
When I was thinking of books to read for the myth section of Carl’s challenge I did consider the Iliad, and the Odyssey too, so when I was wandering around the library and stumbled across this book it seemed perfect. And I’m so glad I picked it up; it makes for a really good read.
This is a very poetic novel. And more than a tad post-modern. But don’t be put off, it is beautifully told. Or maybe told is the wrong word. Cook doesn’t really attempt to tell any story, rather she gives us flashes of scenes, hints at this and that, spartan[1] depictions of events and people. It works so well.
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Linknotes:
- see what I did there? ↩
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Elizabeth Cook,
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Posted by: Fence in Books
Author: Ron Hansen
ISBN: 0285637541 DDC: 813.54
See also: LibraryThing ;
He was growing into middle age and was living then in a bungalow on Woodland Avenue. Green weeds split the porch steps, a wasp nest clung to an attic gable, a rope swing looped down from a dying elm tree and the ground below it was scuffed soft as flour.
I think this is one of the rare cases where watching the film version improves your enjoyment of the novel. Maybe because for certain passages I could really here the narrator from the film while I was reading. I think that this might make an excellent audio book. Then again, I’ve never listened to an audio book, so what do I know.
In case you didn’t pick the basic plot up from the title of this novel 
it revolves around the infamous Jesse James and his murderer Robert “Bob” Ford.
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813.54,
9 Stars,
assassin,
fictional bio,
historical fiction,
Jesse James,
murder,
Robert Ford,
Ron Hansen,
The Assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert F,
USA - 1880's,
USA - Reconstruction & Industrialisation,
USA - western
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Posted by: Fence in Books
Author: Timothy Findley
ISBN: 0140050116 DDC: 813.54
See also: Library Thing ; The Stay at Home Bookworm ; Wikipedia
Prologue
She was standing in the middle of the railroad tracks. Her head was bowed and her right front hoof was raised as if she rested.
The Wars tells the story of Robert Ross, an officer in the Canadian army during WWI, a young man full of guilt over the death of his sister. This sister, Rowena, suffered from hydrocephalus, and Robert had promised to never leave her. But, when she is being watched by their younger brother Stuart, she falls, hits her head and dies. In the aftermath, Robert enlists.
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10 Stars,
1915,
813.54,
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Canada - wwi,
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Posted by: Fence in Books
Author: Cormac McCarthy
ISBN: 9780330447546 DDC: 813.54
Read for the RIP Challenge
See also: LibaryThing ; Darryl’s Library ; Skewed Perspectives ; Cynical Opimitsm ; Bookwomon
When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before.
This is a novel set at some unidentified point in the future when the world has pretty much come to an end. Something, we don’t know what, has brought society down. There is little food and little shelter left, and for our two main protagonists there is always the danger that they might meet someone on the road, someone who might kill them in order to take what little they have, or maybe someone who might kill them in order to eat them. They travel on, this unnamed man and unnamed boy, constantly on the road, moving trying to find something.
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7 Stars,
813.54,
apocolyptic future,
Cormac McCarthy,
dystopian future,
end of the world,
future,
humanity,
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Posted by: Fence in Books
Author: Connie Willis
ISBN: 0450579875 DDC: 813.54
See also: LibraryThing ; SF Reviews ;
Read with Eclectic Circus
Mr. Dunworthy opened the door to the laboratory and his spectacles promptly steamed up.
“Am I too late?” he said, yanking them off and squinting at Mary.
In the year 2525, there are women… sorry, about that interruption from Cleopatra 2525, it was really out of place, considering that this book isn’t even set in 2525, but in the year 2054, when historians could travel back in time to really study their subjects. Kivrin is one such historian. But she doesn’t want to travel to the C20th, where most historians are sent, she wants to be the first to travel back to the Medieval period. And she succeeds in her aim, but something isn’t quite right. No one can ever be entirely certain as to where or when a historian will end up. A certain amount of slippage always occurs. But in Kivrin’s case her tech falls ill and so her fate is even more uncertain.
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8 Stars,
813.54,
Black Death,
Britain - middle ages,
C14th,
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