Small Change ; book three. Peter Carmichael is commander of the Watch, Britain’s distinctly British secret police. It’s his job to warn the Prime Minister of treason, to arrest plotters, and to discover Jews. The midnight knock of a Watchman is the most dreaded sound in the realm. Now, in 1960, a global peace conference […]
Small Change : book 2 In 1949, eight years after the “Peace with Honor” was negotiated between Great Britain and Nazi Germany by the Farthing Set, England has completed its slide into fascist dicatorship. Then a bomb explodes in a London suburb. The brilliant but politically compromised Inspector Carmichael of Scotland Yard is assigned the […]
Small Change : book 1 Eight years after they overthrew Churchill and led Britain into a separate peace with Hitler, the upper-crust families of the “Farthing set” are gathered for a weekend retreat. Among them is estranged Farthing scion Lucy Kahn, who can’t understand why her and her husband David’s presence was so forcefully requested. […]
On the 31st March 2016 Imre Kertész died. I hadn’t heard of him before I saw the post on Metafilter marking his passing, but in the thread his first book, Fatelessness was mentioned. It is a fictionalised account of Kertész’s own experiences as a teenager in Hungary and then Auschwitz and Buchenwald. He was fourteen […]
Opening in 1944 this graphic novel spans decades as it shows how Captain America has battled with Hydra for as long as he has been alive. But in the history of Hydra that isn’t very long. They have been around since before the pyramids, and they are patient and will to out-wait their enemies to […]
At the end of the nineteen thirties in Germany a little girl travelled with her mother and brother on the train. The children were being sent to live with foster parents. Their mother could no longer take care of them. But en route the little boy dies. This is the first death in a book […]
Reread for my book club. And on second read it is just as powerful, if not more so than on first reading. Original review from 2010 below ISBN: 978028563293 ; DDC: 813.54 Read for the 1930’s Mini-Challenge Author’s wiki page Address Unknown is a very slight book. It is told in letters between Max Eisenstein […]
My final read for this year’s RIP In June of 1924 reports from Everest reveal that George Mallory and Andrew Irvine have vanished, missing, presumed dead in their attempt to reach the summit. The news reaches our narrator, Jake Perry, as he himself is climbing a mountain. He is accompanied by Richard Deacon, a man […]
It is 1944 and American pilot Rose Justice is working in England, she has joined the ATA and is hard at work transporting planes for the RAF, and occasionally flying important people about. Returning from one such mission she encounters a doodlebug or Vergeltungswaffe flying bomb. In her efforts to divert it from its course […]
reread 24th Sept 2018 for my bookclub. And on rereading I still really enjoyed this book. I still think that some of it is a little forced, and the first person narrator telling a third person story is a little contrived. But I still loved it and would highly recommend it. I’m not sure the […]
ISBN: 9780552772884 This book I loved. Loved. But I should have guessed, I’ve loved most of Russell’s books. I wasn’t hugely fond of part of Children of God, as I recall, but I still intend to reread it at some point. She just writes such wonderful characters. And then puts them in such interesting plots. […]
based on book, Der Vorleser.
In Germany, 1958, Michael Berg is feeling unwell. He wanders through the streets for a while before almost collapsing in the entrance to an apartment block. He vomits. A passing woman helps him out. She cleans up after him and helps get him home. It turns out that he has scarlet fever and remains bed-ridden for a number of months. Once he feels better he returns to thank the woman, and ends up having an affair with her.
The film is told in flashbacks. And in 1966 we meet up with Michael Berg again. He is attending law school and as part of his course he attends the trial of a group of Nazi guards who are accused of letting 300 women die in a fire. One of those on trial is Hanna Schmitz, the woman he had the affair with.