Archive for September, 2009

LITTLE BIRD OF HEAVEN by Joyce Carol Oates

LITTLE BIRD OF HEAVEN is inimitably Oates. It has all her signatures – -the stylization of her writing, the focus on family narrative as destiny, and the mixture of pain and love. The stylized writing in this book is more pronounced than in some of her others. She repeats some things multiple times for emphasis and for varied affect. Initially, this bothered me but as the book progressed, I was so caught up in the narrative that nothing could deter me from wanting to turn to the next page.

September 15, 2009 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , ,  Â· Posted in: Class - Race - Gender, Contemporary, Mystery/Suspense, NE & New York, y Award Winning Author

NATURAL ELEMENTS by Richard Mason

NATURAL ELEMENTS is the present-day story of Joan McAllister, a woman in her seventies, whose forty-something daughter, Eloise (also McAllister), gently but firmly deposits her in an elegant nursing home called The Albany. Before they return to London to accomplish this move, the two take a trip to South Africa, home of Joan’s ancestors. Eloise, a high-powered investment fund manager, returns to England prematurely on a business emergency, leaving her mother to sort through some family history on her own.

September 14, 2009 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: Facing History, Literary, South Africa, World Lit

LOOKING AFTER PIGEON by Maud Carol Markson

LOOKING AFTER PIGEON transports the reader to the Jersey shore in the mid-seventies, with the precocious five-year old Pigeon as narrator and tour guide. fter their father walks out, their mother, Joan, moves Pigeon and her older siblings Robin and Dove to their uncle Edward’s house in an un-named New Jersey beach town.

September 13, 2009 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: Coming-of-Age, Contemporary, Debut Novel, US Mid-Atlantic

LOVE AND SUMMER by William Trevor

In William Trevor’s novel LOVE AND SUMMER, past and present don’t collide but instead merge into a shimmering, elusive and painful present. The novel set in the 1950s explores the lives of interconnecting characters following the funeral of Mrs. Eileen Connulty in the Irish town of Rathmoye.

September 12, 2009 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , ,  Â· Posted in: Ireland, Man Booker Nominee, World Lit, y Award Winning Author

UNDER THIS UNBROKEN SKY by Shandi Mitchell

UNDER THE UNBROKEN SKY is the story of two related families living on the prairie of Western Canada in the 1930s. They are part of the diaspora of the Ukrainian agrarian settlement to that region that began in the late 1800s and continued through the First World War.

September 11, 2009 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: Canada, Commonwealth Prize, Debut Novel, Family Matters, y Award Winning Author

Post 9/11 Books

Post 9-11 books

September 10, 2009 · Judi Clark · 2 Comments
Tags:  Â· Posted in: Xtra