TRAIN TO TRIESTE by Domnica Radulescu

Domnica Radulescu’ semi-autobiographical debut novel, TRAIN TO TRIESTE, is a fascinating page turner, full of contrasts. She describes, with nostalgia and much love, her homeland, Romania, with its physical beauty, it’s mountains, plains, rivers, forests, and extraordinary seaside resorts and homes on the Black Sea. She writes of “one beautiful summer,” with its “linden trees and vodka made from fermented plums and stars and mountains and raspberries….” The scenery is “gorgeous,” the Carpathian Mountains are dark and mysterious – a perfect place for our protagonist, seventeen year-old Mona Manoliu, to fall in love. It is the summer of 1977.

November 16, 2009 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: Debut Novel, Romania, World Lit

SUPREME COURTSHIP by Christopher Buckley

I thought, as I closed this book SUPREME COURTSHIP, Well, that was fun! I mention this because I typically finish a book and think it was good, or so-so, or not so good. I can’t remember the last time I thought a book was simply fun. And the other thing, I laughed out loud. My dog looked up at me in wonderment.

November 9, 2009 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags:  Â· Posted in: Humorous, Satire, Washington, D.C.

BLOOD SAFARI by Deon Meyer

Setting his novels in contemporary South Africa, Deon Meyer raises the bar for thrillers by infusing each of his novels with the national political tensions—historical, racial, and economic—and the urban and rural disparities which make the country so complex and so difficult to govern. His “heroes” have traditionally been far from “heroic” in the traditional sense, always people at odds with society, especially in the case of Lemmer, main character (and hired bodyguard) in BLOOD SAFARI, a man who has allowed his passions to dominate him to the extent that he served time for his assault on four men and gained pleasure in killing the ringleader—“I felt at one with the world, whole and complete, good and right. It’s a terrible thing. It intoxicates. It’s addictive. And so terribly sweet.”

October 3, 2009 · Judi Clark · 2 Comments
Tags: , , ,  Â· Posted in: 2009 Favorites, Character Driven, Class - Race - Gender, South Africa, Thriller/Spy/Caper, World Lit

MORNING AND EVENING TALK by Naguib Mahfouz

Written in 1987, this last entry in the Cairo series by Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz is not a novel in the traditional sense. The book has no beginning, middle, and end, and no real plot. There is no standard chronology or strong characters who develop fully during the action. In a bold experiment, Mahfouz uses the traditional Arab biographical dictionary as his structural model for the book.

August 7, 2009 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: Egypt, Literary, Nobel Prize for Literature, Translated, Unique Narrative, World Lit, y Award Winning Author

HOUSE SECRETS by Mike Lawson

When Joe DeMarco, “fixer” for Speaker of the House John Fitzpatrick Mahoney is called into the Speaker’s office to help him “help a friend” whose reporter son has drowned, he has no idea how his private investigation into the reporter’s death will mushroom into a case which will ultimately affect his party’s choice of a Presidential candidate. HOUSE SECRETS is the fourth in Mike Lawson’s Joe DeMarco series.

July 19, 2009 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: ,  Â· Posted in: Satire, Thriller/Spy/Caper, Washington, D.C.

RENEGADE: THE MAKING OF A PRESIDENT by Richard Wolffe

On March 18, 2008, presidential candidate Barak H. Obama spoke to the American people from Philadelphia. He addressed race in a manner that has rarely been discussed in a public forum before. But Barak Obama was a historical candidate running for the presidency of the United States of America in extraordinary times. And he spoke as someone from both inside and outside the African American experience.

July 4, 2009 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: Non-fiction, United States