In Falling Snow is a great book with a little bit of everything—history, family drama, romance, lighter moments with Iris and Violet, and even a little bit of mystery. MacColl notes that the telling of the story itself and capturing the spirit of Royaumont and the women who ran in was more important than scrutinizing every historical fact and figure, and I feel she pulled this off very well.
Author:
A review of Motherline by Lisa Rosen
Motherline is a bit like a coming-of-age story—Maggie is facing first-time motherhood, saying goodbye to merely being a daughter and granddaughter and now having to face responsibility for another human being, thus continuing the “motherline” of generations of women that had gone before her, while Katharine is still grieving the son that she lost but trying to move forward into her new role as grandmother (and eventual family matriarch) in her own way.
Imagination, Wit, and Madness: The Wapshot Scandal, a novel by John Cheever
John Cheever is a wonderful writer, and his novel The Wapshot Scandal contains observed life and imagined adventure, bringing together ancient rituals and bourgeois affections and habits, private desires and deceptions and public reputations, romance called to reconcile a reality that resists, supernatural suspicions that subvert reason, and mournful, surprisingly poetic interrogations, as Cheever examines family and communal life. The novel does not contain stories that offer easy comfort, though their intimate cruelty and sensual pleasure and melancholy do entertain.
Interview with Eric Nierstedt
The author of The Lightrider Journals talks about his work, his route to becoming a writer, his title, his themes, his current projects, and lots more.
A review of Cry Blue Murder by Kim Kane and Marion Roberts
Unique in its telling, the story unfolds as a series of legal documents, police interviews and statements, pathology reports and the e-mail correspondence between the two Year 9 private school students. From within these Police investigation reports and statements, clues are unlocked and our suspicions focus upon a particular suspect who is a member of the school community.
The Price of Isolation: George Eliot’s Silas Marner
It is a remarkable portrait of social misunderstanding, one that is so clear it illuminates current, similar but subtler suspicion of odd individuals in our own world. The money that Marner makes becomes important to him—obvious reward for his work. He is transformed by his isolation, his work, his money, his (often inhuman or at least unsocial) concerns: achieving independence but a spiritual withering.
We have a copy of The Family by David Laskin to giveaway this month.
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The winner will be drawn on the first of Dec 2013 from subscribers who enter via the newsletter. Good luck!
Interview with Carole McDonnell
The author of The Constant Tower talks about her new book, procrastination, political writing, where her ideas come from, her themes, on sales, and lots more.
Interview with Jaye Ford
The author of Blood Secret reads from and talks about her new book, about the incident that gave rise to it, her main characters, her local settings, her struggles with the writing, her work in progress, and lots more.
A Review of The Silent Wife By A.S.A. Harrison
The Silent Wife is not a long book—a little over 200 pages—but Harrison manages to fit a gripping tale into those few pages. The story is told almost entirely in present tense, so it gives the reader an almost unsettling feeling of voyeurism—we’re absolutely watching these characters self-destruct in real time. There is some backstory offered as a way to explain how Todd and Jodi were shaped by their families (clearly dysfunctional in Todd’s case; less obvious in Jodi’s).