Archive for the ‘2011 Favorites’ Category

THE LIZARD CAGE by Karen Connelly

Burmese politics, including their political prison system, is harrowing and vicious. Not a lot has changed in the past fifty years or so, other than changing the name to Myanmar. Until very recently, they were under military rule and they are still one of the least developed nations in the world. Karen Connelly has not only written a striking and engaging tour de force about this area, but she has brought a country’s atrocities into focus that needs attention badly, and help from developed nations. However, she hasn’t forgotten the novelist’s rule of thumb to entertain. It doesn’t read like a diatribe or soapbox, it reads like an exquisite, dramatic story of friendship, endurance, compassion, love, and faith in the human condition.

July 23, 2011 · Judi Clark · One Comment
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: 2011 Favorites, Latin American/Caribbean, Orange Prize, Reading Guide, World Lit, y Award Winning Author

THE CRY OF THE OWL by Patricia Highsmith

American author, Patricia Highsmith, who died in 1995, left behind a respectable body of work. Highsmith is known primarily for her psychological thrillers, so perhaps it’s not too surprising that a number of her novels have been adapted for the big screen–including THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY, RIPLEY’S GAME, RIPLEY UNDERGROUND, THE CRY OF THE OWL and THIS SWEET SICKNESS. Highsmith’s first novel, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, was made into a film directed by Alfred Hitchcock–a man with an uncanny ability to spot new talent. While STRANGERS ON A TRAIN is my all-time favourite Hitchcock film, it veers away from the darkest corners of Highsmith’s tale. I like to think that even Hitchcock wasn’t ready to wrestle with some of Highsmith’s controversial and insidiously buried themes.

July 21, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags:  Â· Posted in: 2011 Favorites, Classic, Mystery/Suspense

ALTHOUGH OF COURSE YOU END UP BECOMING YOURSELF by David Lipsky

There is that question we asked one another in college: Who in history, if you could meet and talk to whomever you wished, would you select?… Reading Lipsky’s book, ALTHOUGH OF COURSE YOU END UP BEING YOURSELF, reads like a contemporary answer to the “who would you choose” hypothesis. Wallace is gone now, but what if you could just spend a few days with him, even a few hours? What was the man like, really? By his work, he will be remembered. But what of the man?

July 20, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , , ,  Â· Posted in: 2011 Favorites, Non-fiction

ELEGIES FOR THE BROKEN HEARTED by Christie Hodgen

The premise—we are shaped by our interactions with others—sounds like something from a school summer writing assignment and is almost too bland to be worked with. But if truly great writing creates marvels from almost nothing, then Christie Hodgen’s ELEGIES FOR THE BROKENHEARTED is one such wonder.

July 19, 2011 · Judi Clark · One Comment
Tags:  Â· Posted in: 2011 Favorites, Character Driven, Coming-of-Age, Contemporary, Family Matters, Literary, y Award Winning Author

THE WINTER GHOSTS by Kate Mosse

Mosse gives her beguiling novel an old fashioned gothic framework that suits this eerie story of ghostly love in an insular mountain village of France a decade after WWI. The story opens in 1933 as Frederick Watson visits an antiquarian bookseller in Toulouse. “He walked like a man recently returned to the world. Every step was careful, deliberate. Every step to be relished.” Well-dressed and confident, Watson knows his appearance contrasts sharply with his last visit to Toulouse in 1928 at age 25. “He had been another man then, a tattered man, worn threadbare by grief.”

July 10, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , , , ,  Â· Posted in: 2011 Favorites, Facing History, France, Mystery/Suspense, Psychological Suspense

MISERY BAY by Steve Hamilton

After a wait of 5 years and 2 non-series books, including last year’s Edgar award winning THE LOCK ARTIST, Steve Hamilton has brought back Alex McKnight in MISERY BAY, the eighth book in this excellent series. While relaxing at the Glasgow Inn in Paradise, Michigan with the owner Jackie Connery and his friend Vinnie “Red Sky” LeBlanc, Alex’s evening is interrupted by a man he didn’t expect to ever see there, Chief Roy Maven, who surprisingly asks for Alex’s help. Chief Maven, the head of the nearby Sault Ste. Marie police force, wants Alex to help his old state trooper partner, Charles “Raz” Razniewski, determine why his son Charlie would hang himself in a remote part of Misery Bay, Lake Superior on the Upper Peninsula part of Michigan.

July 3, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , ,  Â· Posted in: 2011 Favorites, Sleuths Series, US Midwest, y Award Winning Author