Jane, the fox, and me by Fanny Britt
Translated by Christelle Morelli and Susan Ouriou Oh, this is a beautiful book. The art work is just lovely, I love the style of it. Simple, often black and white, but...
29 June 2018
Seeking Whom He May Devour by Fred Vargas
Reread in April 2015 and it was just as good as I remembered. Original review from 22nd April 2006. ISBN: 0098461560 Trans from the French: David Bellos Yes again a cover...
14 April 2015
The son by Michel Rostain
translated from French by Adriana Hunter It is eleven days since our first person narrator has died. He was just twenty one years old when meningitis took him. Now he tells...
2 September 2013
Manon Lescaut by Abbé [Antoine Francois] Prévost
Read online – Gutenberg This is a book I would never have picked up if not for the fact that it is on the reading list of an online course I’ve...
9 June 2013
The chalk circle man by Fred Vargas
Author: Fred Vargas ; trans from the french by Sian Reynolds
An Adamsberg novel
Chief Inspector Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg has recently been transferred to Paris. His police methods aren’t exactly standard procedure and his inspectors have a lot to get used to. But they can have no doubt that he is a born policeman, and while even he is unable to explain how he arrives at his conclusions he is usually correct. In this case he thinks that there is something strange about the blue chalk circles that have been appearing in the Parisian streets. He is convinced that there is something sinister about them.
15 May 2010
Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
Author: Irene Nireovsky
Two novellas and some appendices make up this book. The two fiction pieces were intended to be part of a series of books about France during World War II, but the author, Irene Nemirovsky died in a concentration camp in August 1942, and that is what makes up the non-fiction element of this book. Of course the real like story of Nemirovsky, and how this book came to be published makes up a large element of the media coverage surrounding the novel, but the fiction element alone deserves attention. The background, and fact that it was written as these events were taking place, adds to the work as a whole.
19 February 2007
The Three Evangelists by Fred Vargas
The first Vargas book I read was Seeking Whom He May Devour, which I loved, and the reason I picked it up was because I liked the cover, well, this one doesn’t have quite such a gripping cover, but it really did grow on me. It is quite simple, just a tree picked out by a shaft of light in a garden, everything else is half hidden in the darkness. It really suits the story.
As I’ve mentioned before characters are what make, or break, a book for me. And this book has great, if slightly odd, stars. Eccentric is probably the polite term.
10 January 2007
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