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Jeff Kyser
said...
I just finished "Among other Things, I've Taken Up Smoking" by Aoihaenn Sweeney. This is Sweeney's first novel.
Miranda, our heroine, moves from Manhattan to a small, private island off the coast of Maine with her father and mother when she is 2 years old. A few years later, her mother drowns attempting to row across the small channel. Miranda and her father, alone on their island, go about their daily lives while working on her father's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Upon her graduation from high school, her father arranges for her to go to Manhattan to organize the library at the Institute of Classical Studies. There she confronts the truth about her family's past and how her own view of the world around her is profoundly influenced by her experiences on those two vastly different islands.
This is a very good first novel. Touching on themes of loneliness, family secrets, and sexual awakening, Miranda's story is conveyed with a sense of openness and wonder as she is surprised and empowered by things she discovers about herself and her family.
I enjoyed this novel very much and look forward to Sweeney's future work.
I just finished reading "Dark of the Moon" by John Sandford. Although this is not one of the Lucas Davenport 'Prey' novels, Sandford brings in a character who has made appearances in other 'Prey' novels, Virgil Flowers.
Flowers, working for Davenport in the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), is dispatched to his boyhood stomping grounds to investigate a murder. On his way into town, a burning house grabs his attention and reveals yet another killing.
Sticking with the taut, suspenseful brand of fiction that defines his other work, Sandford fleshes out another winning character in Flowers. Navigating among local politics, old feuds, and a burgeoning relationship with the sheriff's sister, Flowers tracks down the common threads among the growing body count and lets the chips fall where they may.
'Dark of the Moon' is a good novel. There's plenty of action, enough mystery to keep you guessing, and good violence; what's not to like?
I just read Pat Conroy's new title, South of Broad. I enjoyed it immensely. Conroy really describes scenes so dramatically. I was almost sorry when I finished.
I recently read "Sarah's Key" by Tatiana de Rosnay. The novel moves back and forth between the telling of the Paris roundups and deportations of Jewish families who were arrested, held at the Vélodrome d'Hiver outside the city, then transported to Auschwitz and the present day Julia Jarmond. She is and journalist and an American who has a rocky marriage. She is assigned to cover the 60th anniversary of the Vél' d'Hiv' roundups. Julia soon learns that the apartment she and her husband plan to move into was acquired by Bertrand's family when its Jewish occupants were dispossessed and deported 60 years before. She resolves to find out what happened to the former occupants: Wladyslaw and Rywka Starzynski, parents of 10-year-old Sarah and four-year-old Michel. The more Julia discovers—especially about Sarah, the only member of the Starzynski family to survive—the more she uncovers about Bertrand's family, about France and, finally, herself. It's a novel that is hard to put down.
4 comments:
I just finished "Among other Things, I've Taken Up Smoking" by Aoihaenn Sweeney. This is Sweeney's first novel.
Miranda, our heroine, moves from Manhattan to a small, private island off the coast of Maine with her father and mother when she is 2 years old. A few years later, her mother drowns attempting to row across the small channel. Miranda and her father, alone on their island, go about their daily lives while working on her father's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Upon her graduation from high school, her father arranges for her to go to Manhattan to organize the library at the Institute of Classical Studies. There she confronts the truth about her family's past and how her own view of the world around her is profoundly influenced by her experiences on those two vastly different islands.
This is a very good first novel. Touching on themes of loneliness, family secrets, and sexual awakening, Miranda's story is conveyed with a sense of openness and wonder as she is surprised and empowered by things she discovers about herself and her family.
I enjoyed this novel very much and look forward to Sweeney's future work.
I just finished reading "Dark of the Moon" by John Sandford. Although this is not one of the Lucas Davenport 'Prey' novels, Sandford brings in a character who has made appearances in other 'Prey' novels, Virgil Flowers.
Flowers, working for Davenport in the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), is dispatched to his boyhood stomping grounds to investigate a murder. On his way into town, a burning house grabs his attention and reveals yet another killing.
Sticking with the taut, suspenseful brand of fiction that defines his other work, Sandford fleshes out another winning character in Flowers. Navigating among local politics, old feuds, and a burgeoning relationship with the sheriff's sister, Flowers tracks down the common threads among the growing body count and lets the chips fall where they may.
'Dark of the Moon' is a good novel. There's plenty of action, enough mystery to keep you guessing, and good violence; what's not to like?
You read it now!
I just read Pat Conroy's new title, South of Broad. I enjoyed it immensely. Conroy really describes scenes so dramatically. I was almost sorry when I finished.
I recently read "Sarah's Key" by Tatiana de Rosnay. The novel moves back and forth between the telling of the Paris roundups and deportations of Jewish families who were arrested, held at the Vélodrome d'Hiver outside the city, then transported to Auschwitz and the present day Julia Jarmond. She is and journalist and an American who has a rocky marriage. She is assigned to cover the 60th anniversary of the Vél' d'Hiv' roundups. Julia soon learns that the apartment she and her husband plan to move into was acquired by Bertrand's family when its Jewish occupants were dispossessed and deported 60 years before. She resolves to find out what happened to the former occupants: Wladyslaw and Rywka Starzynski, parents of 10-year-old Sarah and four-year-old Michel. The more Julia discovers—especially about Sarah, the only member of the Starzynski family to survive—the more she uncovers about Bertrand's family, about France and, finally, herself. It's a novel that is hard to put down.
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