I have always liked Franzen’s novels and I went to hear him speak once at a Writer’s Festival event.
Here’s the blurb …
Jonathan Franzen’s gift for wedding depth and vividness of character with breadth of social vision has never been more dazzlingly evident than in Crossroads.
It’s December 23, 1971, and heavy weather is forecast for Chicago. Russ Hildebrandt, the associate pastor of a liberal suburban church, is on the brink of breaking free of a marriage he finds joyless–unless his wife, Marion, who has her own secret life, beats him to it. Their eldest child, Clem, is coming home from college on fire with moral absolutism, having taken an action that will shatter his father. Clem’s sister, Becky, long the social queen of her high-school class, has sharply veered into the counterculture, while their brilliant younger brother Perry, who’s been selling drugs to seventh graders, has resolved to be a better person. Each of the Hildebrandts seeks a freedom that each of the others threatens to complicate.
Jonathan Franzen’s novels are celebrated for their unforgettably vivid characters and for their keen-eyed take on contemporary America. Now, in Crossroads, Franzen ventures back into the past and explores the history of two generations. With characteristic humor and complexity, and with even greater warmth, he conjures a world that resonates powerfully with our own.
A tour de force of interwoven perspectives and sustained suspense, its action largely unfolding on a single winter day, Crossroads is the story of a Midwestern family at a pivotal moment of moral crisis. Jonathan Franzen’s gift for melding the small picture and the big picture has never been more dazzlingly evident.
Once again it was a very long book, but I enjoyed it. I liked the switch in perspectives (although I intensely disliked Russ). I think Franzen writes like a woman, which I mean as a compliment and he might take as a criticism, his novels focus on families, and relationships and to my mind seem character rather than plot driven. I look forward to the next two.
This was published by Dean Street Press – part of their Classic Women’s Fiction. You can get a Kindle version for less than $5.
Here’s the blurb …
When the time comes for you to retire, Hugo, if you want a quiet life, don’t settle down in the country. Bury yourself in London or any really large city, and you can live like a hermit, but avoid the outskirts of a village. I am dazed by the ceaseless whirl of activities in which almost everyone in and round Ravenskirk is involved.
Sara Monteith makes an ideal correspondent for Hugo Jamieson, brother of her lost love Ivo, killed in the war before they could marry. Her neighbours in the lovely Border village of Ravenskirk don’t know that Sara has moved here because it’s where Ivo and Hugo grew up, but they welcome her warmly. Soon, she’s drawn into the active village social scene of tea parties, gardening, carol-singing, and Coronation festivities, dodging the judgments of stern Miss Bonaly, defending her helper Madge Marchbanks, an unwed mother, befriending kind, practical Elizabeth Drysdale and charming Mrs. Currie and her daughter Sylvia (the latter first met halfway through Sara’s drawing room window), and having an embarrassing first encounter with rugged Major Whitburn. Add in her nephew Arthur, neglected by an indifferent father, Arthur’s dog Pam, and even Hugo himself returning unexpectedly from overseas, and Sara’s life is a ‘ceaseless whirl’ indeed!
Molly Clavering was for many years the neighbour and friend of bestselling author D.E. Stevenson (in just such a village as Ravenskirk), and they may well have influenced one another’s writing. First published in 1955, Dear Hugo is one of the funniest of her spirited, joyful comedies of Scottish village life. This new edition includes an introduction by Elizabeth Crawford.
This book was delightful and charming. I liked the descriptions of the country side and the other Ravenskirk inhabitants.
This is what the Reading Standard said in 1955
You will like ‘Dear Hugo’ by Molly Clavering, that effortless expert on the Lowland Scots scene. It consists of letters from Sara Monteith, an old friend, to Dr Hugo, during his two years’ African exile. What letters though! Full of human stuff, charm and sly fun for the reader—in short, typical Molly Clavering.
This is my book club book for January, I had never heard of it.
Here’s the blurb
Where have I come from? From the land of rivers, the land of waterfalls, the land of ancient chants, the land of mountains…
In 2013, Kurdish journalist Behrouz Boochani was illegally detained on Manus Island. He has been there ever since.
People would run to the mountains to escape the warplanes and found asylum within their chestnut forests…
This book is the result. Laboriously tapped out on a mobile phone and translated from the Farsi. It is a voice of witness, an act of survival. A lyric first-hand account. A cry of resistance. A vivid portrait through five years of incarceration and exile.
Do Kurds have any friends other than the mountains?
This is a very personal account of life in detention on Manus Island. Every Australian should read it. I knew it was terrible, but I didn’t know that it was designed to be terrible.
A friend recommended this one, so I reserved it at the library.
Here’s the blurb …
A heartwarming and refreshing debut novel that proves one thing: there’s not enough data in the world to predict what will make your heart tick.
Stella Lane thinks math is the only thing that unites the universe. She comes up with algorithms to predict customer purchases–a job that has given her more money than she knows what to do with, and way less experience in the dating department than the average thirty-year-old.
It doesn’t help that Stella has Asperger’s and French kissing reminds her of a shark getting its teeth cleaned by pilot fish. Her conclusion: she needs lots of practice–with a professional. Which is why she hires escort Michael Phan. The Vietnamese and Swedish stunner can’t afford to turn down Stella’s offer, and agrees to help her check off all the boxes on her lesson plan–from foreplay to more-than-missionary position…
Before long, Stella not only learns to appreciate his kisses, but crave all of the other things he’s making her feel. Their no-nonsense partnership starts making a strange kind of sense. And the pattern that emerges will convince Stella that love is the best kind of logic…
This was a really fun read and I particularly appreciated the autistic heroine – we need to see more autism (so long as it’s positive) in popular culture.
I have read other books by Michelle De Krester, so I was keen to read this one when I saw it in my local book shop. It is double-sided, you read one side and then flip it over and read the other. I don’t think you need to read a particular side first.
Here’s the blurb …
‘When my family emigrated it felt as if we’d been stood on our heads.’
Michelle de Kretser’s electrifying take on scary monsters turns the novel upside down – just as migration has upended her characters’ lives.
Lili’s family migrated to Australia from Asia when she was a teenager. Now, in the 1980s, she’s teaching in the south of France. She makes friends, observes the treatment handed out to North African immigrants and is creeped out by her downstairs neighbour. All the while, Lili is striving to be A Bold, Intelligent Woman like Simone de Beauvoir.
Lyle works for a sinister government department in near-future Australia. An Asian migrant, he fears repatriation and embraces ‘Australian values’. He’s also preoccupied by his ambitious wife, his wayward children and his strong-minded elderly mother. Islam has been banned in the country, the air is smoky from a Permanent Fire Zone, and one pandemic has already run its course.
Three scary monsters – racism, misogyny and ageism – roam through this mesmerising novel. Its reversible format enacts the disorientation that migrants experience when changing countries changes the story of their lives. With this suspenseful, funny and profound book, Michelle de Kretser has made something thrilling and new.
‘Which comes first, the future or the past?’
I think this book consists of two novellas and the linking theme is living in a place that is not your place of birth. One of the stories is set in the future and one in the past. I liked them both, but my favourite would be Lilli’s story (the one set in the past). I think that’s because she was young, living in France and it all seemed a bit of an adventure. Lyle’s story (the other version) was funnier – I liked the references to trying to be more Australian, but also more upsetting – the future is not a particularly pleasant place and it all seemed plausible: 50+ temperatures in Melbourne, Australia’s unclimate policy, etc.
I am not sure when I first heard of this author. I tried to find her books at my local book store, but they didn’t have any. In the end I found this one at the library.
Here’s the blurb …
Between 2005 and 2009, in a remote religious Mennonite colony, over a hundred girls and women were knocked unconscious and raped, often repeatedly, by what many thought were ghosts or demons, as a punishment for their sins. As the women tentatively began to share the details of the attacks-waking up sore and bleeding and not understanding why their stories were chalked up to ‘wild female imagination.’
Women Talking is an imagined response to these real events. Eight women, all illiterate, without any knowledge of the world outside their colony and unable even to speak the language of the country they live in, meet secretly in a hayloft with the intention of making a decision about how to protect themselves and their daughters from future harm. They have two days to make a plan, while the men of the colony are away in the city attempting to raise enough money to bail out the rapists (not ghosts as it turns out but local men) and bring them home.
How should we live? How should we love? How should we treat one another? How should we organise our societies? These are questions the women in Women Talking ask one another-and Miriam Toews makes them the questions we must all ask ourselves.
I really enjoyed this, although it made me angry when I thought about all of the women and children living under such a system. The writing is beautiful, simple but powerful. At times it is darkly funny, but it is also sad and occasionally frustrating (the women get bogged down in semantics – like any meeting anywhere)
A family member lent this to me – out of the blue she just asked if I wanted to read it and as I knew her taste was good I jumped at the chance.
Here’s the blurb …
“Kate Southwood has written an absolutely gorgeous – and completely modern – first novel” — New York Times Book Review
March 18, 1925. The day begins as any other rainy, spring day in the small settlement of Marah, Illinois. But the town lies directly in the path of the worst tornado in US history, which will descend without warning midday and leave the community in ruins. By nightfall, hundreds will be homeless and hundreds more will lie in the streets, dead or grievously injured. Only one man, Paul Graves, will still have everything he started the day with –– his family, his home, and his business, all miraculously intact.
Based on the historic Tri-State tornado, Falling to Earth follows Paul Graves and his young family in the year after the storm as they struggle to comprehend their own fate and that of their devastated town, as they watch Marah resurrect itself from the ruins, and as they miscalculate the growing resentment and hostility around them with tragic results
It was fabulous – beautifully written. I found it compelling – the way their lives slowly unravel around them.
This is the third in the series that started with Labyrinth. Once again, I have borrowed this from a friend. It sat in my pile for quite a while, but once I started reading it I finished it quickly.
Here’s the blurb …
1942, Nazi-occupied France. Sandrine, a spirited and courageous nineteen-year-old, finds herself drawn into a Resistance group in Carcassonne – codenamed ‘Citadel’ – made up of ordinary women who are prepared to risk everything for what is right. And when she meets Raoul, they discover a shared passion for the cause, for their homeland, and for each other. But in a world where the enemy now lies in every shadow – where neighbour informs on neighbour; where friends disappear without warning and often without trace – love can demand the highest price of all.
I must admit that towards the end I started to skim pages – particularly any torture sections. Over all I liked it, but these novels are long and in my opinion could do with a bit of editing. I think these novels would make a fabulous TV series.
