THE FISH CHILD
Lucía Puenzo
Translated from the Spanish by David William Foster
The most interesting aspect of this book is not that it is a romantic tale of two teenage girls who are lovers struggling to stay together despite huge class and wealth differences. Nor is it the choice of the family dog, Serafín, as a narrator for the events. What makes The Fish Child interesting is &hellip
READ MORE
Reviewed by Tad Deffler
|
PICTURES OF YOU
Caroline Leavitt
Two unconnected women, April and Isabelle, pack up and leave their husbands one misty day, but tragedy strikes. Isabelle does not see April's car in the deep fog until it is too late. Their cars collide and …
READ MORE
Reviewed by Akeela Gaibie-Dawood
|
THE EVENT FACTORY
Renee Gladman
Most of us know the disorientation of travel to a country with a different language and customs. The simplest daily activities can become so difficult—where will we eat? How do we look for the bathroom? Reading Renee Gladman's intriguing novella Event Factory redoubles that feeling, in the story of a traveler whose experiences and behavior have an unusual orientation to everyday logic.
READ MORE
Reviewed by Michael Matthew
|
BUTTERFLY
Sonja Hartnett
Plum is an ordinary Australian girl who is approaching her fourteenth birthday. Physically, academically and socially Plum is entirely unexceptional. Like many teenagers she finds her parents (and their antique-collecting) embarrassing.
READ MORE
Reviewed by Amanda Meale
|
THIS CAKE IS FOR THE PARTY: STORIES
Sarah Selecky
Sarah Selecky's collection of short stories was shortlisted for the Giller Prize, Canada's top literary prize. The image on the book cover is of a broken plate: a particularly apt image for a collection in which characters
are invariably fragile and the stories document the period before, during, or after their breakage.
READ MORE
Reviewed by Andrew Stancek
|
WE ARE A MUSLIM, PLEASE
Zaiba Malik
This captivating and enlightening memoir of a Muslim girl growing up in 1970s and 1980s Britain begins in the future, as the author has been captured and taken to the Torture Room of the police headquarters in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka. Malik was employed by Channel 4 in Britain, and visited Bangladesh to film a story about …
READ MORE
Reviewed by Darryl Morris
|
THE ARRIVAL OF THE SNAKE WOMAN
Olive Senior
Duality lies at the heart of the short stories contained in this recently republished collection by Canadian-Jamaican author, Olive Senior. Old ways are pitted against the new; traditional religion against the white people's God; the merits of pale complexions over black skin; the backwardness of a rural island versus a prosperous middle-class life.
READ MORE
Reviewed by Charlotte Simpson
|
THE SENTIMENTALISTS
Johanna Skibrud
Put the words Vietnam War and Canada in a sentence together and, for Americans of a certain age—particularly men—you conjure specific memories of the early 1970s. I remember those days as quite carefree: wondering about my chances of a date and thankful I could pass for 18 in the local bar. Yet, is my memory reliable?
READ MORE
Reviewed by Tad Deffler
|
13, RUE THÉRÈSE
Elena Mauli Shapiro
It is not often, when I am reading, that I am so overcome by emotion that I must put the book down until later, when I am quite myself again. I was not expecting that to happen when I began to read 13, rue Thérèse; after all, I've read many love stories and many war stories.
READ MORE
Reviewed by Maggie Oldendorf
|
LEMON
Cordelia Strube
Lemon is not your average teenager—she hates parties and other social functions, spends her time volunteering in the children's cancer ward of the hospital, reads constantly, and criticizes everyone and everything. Pegged by publishers as a modern Catcher in the Rye for girls, Lemon is hilarious, heart-breaking, crude, and hands down one of the best books I have read this year.
READ MORE
Reviewed by Caitlin Fehir
|
|
|
AMANDINE
Marlena de Blasi
Set in Poland and France between the two world wars, this debut novel by acclaimed travel writer Marlena de Blasi has an intriguing premise but promises more than it delivers. Amandine is the illegitimate granddaughter of a beautiful Polish aristocrat. Countess Valeska Czartoryska lost her husband to a shameless and tragic love affair …
READ MORE
Reviewed by Dorothy Dudek Vinicombe
|
SKYLARK FARM
Antonia Arslan
In 1915, the Young Turks, fired by an overwhelming sense of nationalism, embarked on a mission to purge Turkey of its minority citizens. Between 1914 and 1918, over one million Armenian lives were lost …
READ MORE
Reviewed by Julia Mignone
|
ISLAND BENEATH THE SEA: A NOVEL
Isabel Allende
Opening in Saint Domingue, this novel is a reflection on four decades in Zarité's life; from her meager beginnings as a child sold into slavery, to an adult woman striving for a good life for the ones she loves as she attempts to finally gain the freedom she so desires. We are introduced to her when Toulouse Valmorain, a young plantation owner from France, hires her to look over his wife. As Zarité endures her own internal battles, the island around her is rebelling.
READ MORE
Reviewed by C. Lariviere
|
BEEN HERE A THOUSAND YEARS
Mariolina Venezia
Translated from the Italian by Marina Harss
One of the things I look for in a novel is a sense of place, the ability of an author to transport me across the world and set me down in a setting very different from my own. I do not just want descriptions of what a town or city looks like; I want to understand the place—its customs, its people, its smells and tastes. Reading should be a form of travel …
READ MORE
Reviewed by Caitlin Fehir
|
ONE HUNDRED BOTTLES
Ena Lucía Portela
Translated from the Spanish by Achy Obejas
It has often been written that a good novel can take you on a journey. If that is the case, then One Hundred Bottles is a vivacious drunken stagger around 1990s Havana. It is a place of extraordinary energy combined with terrifying shadows, captured beautifully by Ena Lucía Portela, in her first book to be translated into English.
READ MORE
Reviewed by Andy Barnes
|
EXIT WOUNDS
Rutu Modan
Translated by Noah Stollman
Rutu Modan's graphic novel is the story of Koby, a young man living in Tel-Aviv in 2002 whose life changes when his estranged father, Gabriel, disappears. Koby is approached by Numi, his father's lover, who believes that Gabriel has died in a suicide bombing. Koby is initially reluctant to get involved ….
READ MORE
Reviewed by Charlotte Simpson
|
LOOM
Thérèse Soukar Chehade
Loom, the solitary and reclusive neighbor, is a delicious enigma who has captured the imagination of the Zaydan women, as he either slaves away in his garden or endlessly toils at constructing an igloo in the icy snow. He never lets up and is always looming just on the periphery of their home and, indeed, their minds.
READ MORE
Reviewed by Akeela Gaibie-Dawood
|
GRACE, TAMAR AND LASZLO THE BEAUTIFUL
Deborah Kay Davies
Grace, Tamar and Laszlo the Beautiful is a powerful examination of sisterhood examined through a set of short, short stories with a persistent sinister undertone. The winner of Wales Book of the Year 2009, Deborah Kay Davies writes unflinchingly about the enmity and ultimately, the common bond that forever links Grace and Tamar.
READ MORE
Reviewed by Ceri Evans
|
I WANT TO GET MARRIED!
Ghada Abdel Aal
Translated from the Arabic by Nora Eltahawy
Everyone has a dating horror story—an annoying fix-up, a disastrous dinner, or an awkward lack of conversational points. In I Want to Get Married!, Ghada Abdel Aal, an Egyptian woman quickly approaching "old maid" status, shares her quest to find a husband, showing that while marriage customs may differ across the world, dating is a universally horrible experience.
READ MORE
Reviewed by Caitlin Fehir
|
THE SECRET LIVES OF BABA SEGI'S WIVES
Lola Shoneyin
Baba Segi is a very lucky man. He has three wives and seven children. His family validate his need to show off his prosperity, his success and his virility. He is middle aged, plump and prosperous, with quite a high opinion of himself and his success as the family patriarch. But when he brings home a fourth wife, it seems his luck might not hold out.
READ MORE
Reviewed by Judy Lim
|
|
|
