Set largely on the island nation of Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon), this is the story of two families: one belonging to the majority Sinhalese people, and the other to the minority Tamil group. After years of exploitation by colonial powers, Sri Lanka gained independence, and its citizens began jockeying for power. Tamil secessionists turned to violence, and the next three decades saw the Civil War, with 80,000 deaths.
This novel follows the lives of two girls from the different
ethnic groups, and how their lives were affected by the political situation. It's a memorable book, rich in descriptions of the tastes, smells, and sights of this beautiful place of clear waters, colorful flowers and birds, folklore and family stories. The characters seem very real in their conflicts and decisions and attitudes. In this prize-winning novel, we see that even though idyllic
childhoods may devolve into heart-breaking adult years, the beauty and courage of the human spirit resound for the reader. Highly recommended!

This novel was, for me, a huge disappointment. Student life at Oxford was depicted as a welter of booze, drugs, and promiscuity; the unlikeable characters were vacillating, pretentious, and insincere. The plot meandered along, with frequent insertions about past events to enable the hapless reader to try to catch up. (And why include the story of the main character's childhood in Chapter 8?)
Rare inclusions of accounts of seminars or tutorials were couched in arcane vocabulary familiar only to pedants, and reminiscent of an A. S. Byatt lecture this reviewer attended, which rendered an entire audience paralyzed into silence, too stunned to ask any questions. Sprinkled throughout the novel were countless
Britishisms which gave the impression that the author must have kept a notebook always at hand to jot down amusing or unfamiliar turns of phrase. Lists of interesting places to see (many of them pubs) were larded throughout, imparting the feeling that these were included to bulk things up. (Buy a good guidebook instead, folks.)
Last but not least: in the late 1940s an eminent English author named Robert Liddell, a close friend of Olivia Manning, Barbara Pym, and Ivy Compton-Burnett, wrote an "Oxford novel" titled "The Last Enchantments." This was regarded as an excellent fictionalized account of Oxford as it was then, and was reprinted in the 1990s.
Finch's version is a poor replacement. In his book, the dreaming spires have become nightmarish indeed.

Fans of Louise Penny's Chief Inspector Gamache will welcome her latest book, "How the Light Gets In", (much better, IMHO, than the preceding "The Beautiful Mystery").
In this novel, we have both the seemingly motiveless murder of an older woman, once world-famous because of the circumstance of her birth, and Gamache's continuing suspicions of corruption within the Sûreté du Québec, the provincial police force. His young former second-in-command, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, has been left in
a parlous state following the previous situation.
This is a richly atmospheric book, Gamache's frequent visits to the remote hamlet of Three Pines evoking Christmas card scenes of snow-covered cabins, and quaint inhabitants enjoying la cuisine Québecoise. The plethora of individuals can be confusing to the reader encountering them for the first time; and the references to computer technology can be baffling (but aren't they always, to the layman?). That said, "How the Light Gets In" is a very entertaining read, which could spark interesting discussions if it were a book club choice. Amusez-vous bien! (Have a good time!)

David leaves his wife, Emily, after ten years of marriage. Their long relationship had begun in high school; she'd thought it would last forever. She moves to another New Hampshire town, and takes a job teaching in the high school, but she remains raw, in shock, and shattered by the turn of events.
Set in 1969, this novel reflects the times very accurately. Popular music and TV programs, clothes (remember girdles and housedresses, anyone?), cooking (or Peg Bracken's "The I Hate to Cook Book?), everyone smoking, beer cans with pop tops that came off...all this makes for an evocative read for some, or social history for others.
But the human emotions portrayed within it are eternal, and Emily's periodic dipping into her grandmother's diary, which recounts that long-ago marriage in happier and simpler times, underlines this theme.
And what could Emily have done differently in her own marriage? Does even David know?
We like the wistful Emily, and wish that we could somehow help her find her way to at least contentment, if not happiness.
The book ends with Emily soldiering on to make a life for herself; it's just that she doesn't know what that life may be, and is waiting, waiting...
This bluesy story is offset by MacDougall's wry sense of humor and descriptive talents. It's not so much depressing as it is fatalistic. I think most of us know an Emily.

What could link Eva, spinster missionary in the remote Kashgar area of China in the early 1920s, to Frieda, a PhD researcher specializing in Islamic studies, who lives (sometimes) in modern-day London? And why on earth should the former have willed an odd assortment of personal effects to the latter?

This novel shifts back and forth in time: both women struggle with familial relationships, cope with living under the strictures of Islam and the misogyny inherent in it, and hope for the love of an honest and faithful man. And they both cherish their bicycles!

This is an interesting, often unsettling, book, with its comparisons and contrasts of women's lives across cultures and decades. The main characters are quirky, not without flaws, but they are strong and believable as they navigate through a variety of dangerous circumstances. The book could easily lend itself to book group discussions, as to how times have changed, and how they have (unfortunately in some instances) not changed, but also about how women have endured.
It holds the reader's interest throughout. I could see it as a "Masterpiece Theatre" script. The rugged and spartan life led in China, and the bleakness of Frieda's days in London, provide an unusual parallel.

Imagine that you are visiting an old friend, who's spending a year in Paris with her husband and two kids. She's a professor of English on sabbatical, and also an author of (among other books) Regency romance novels. You accompany her as she walks around: visiting small museums, shopping for groceries and trying new recipes, and noticing the Parisiennes' flair and attention to detail. Her joie de vivre, enhanced by her having survived breast cancer, is contagious. But she's also down-to-earth and wryly funny as she copes with her kids' struggles at school; diets by getting her husband to eat half her restaurant meals (my technique too!); and struggles with her "appalling French." This book is partially a collection of vignettes, just what you would cherish after chatting with a warm and astute friend. It's guaranteed to delight, and to set you dreaming about going to Paris. Five stars!

Psychically shocked by her husband's betrayal, Mia becomes involved in teaching a poetry class for adolescent girls, getting acquainted with her aging mother's friends, and helping the young woman next door who struggles with a hot-tempered spouse and two young kids. In so doing, Mia encounters the full spectrum of womanhood. (In fact, this book reminded me of the Gustav Klimt painting, "The Three Ages of Women.") Each female met causes Mia to reflect upon her own life, and events once faced or yet to be faced.
This novel stretches the brain: there are many references to philosophy, literature, religion, films, psychiatry. Sometimes it can make for uncomfortable reading, but it ends up comforting, because, happily, Mia's various roles as observer/crisis counselor/listener evolve into a healing process for one recently wounded. A good selection for middle-aged readers especially.

I really didn't like Shandi Mitchell's "Under the Unbroken Sky"! To me it was just another tale of poverty-stricken misery, like Helen Forrester's memoirs of her Liverpool childhood and Frank McCourt's of his in Ireland.

It's terribly depressing to read of hunger, filth, mental illness, treachery, brutality, hostile people, degradation...on and on and on.

The Canadian prairies are a tough place to live; I know, I was born and lived there for a long time. But the Ukrainian-Canadians whom I knew in Manitoba--of the same generation as those described in Mitchell's book--were resilient, resourceful, humorous, and spirited people, and their children (now in their 60s and 70s) grew up to become doctors, lawyers, artists and musicians, business people. My best friend's mother (raised on a Manitoba farm) bought her own store; she and her husband (who'd fled Ukraine rather than starve under Stalin's repression) raised their five kids in rooms behind this mom-and-pop grocery store. She was also a poet. All five kids attended Ukrainian language classes (as well as good old Lord Roberts School, of course), and all five took music lessons. Four have made music their livelihood at one time or another.

Another woman whom I know, who came to Winnipeg not knowing a word of English, worked in the needle trade, and ultimately bought the apartment building next door to my childhood home.

I cannot reconcile Mitchell's account with the lives of the people whom I knew and admired.

She betrays herself as a Maritimer when she states that the kids didn't attend school because the temperatures hit twenty below. I taught in an elementary school in Winnipeg for three years. We could have indoor recess if, and only if, the temperature went (below) twenty below. (And wind chill wasn't a factor considered at that time!) When the kids (and I, if I were on recess duty that day) came indoors, and they had divested themselves of all their outdoor clothing, and their mittens were steaming atop the radiators, I would have them sit with their palms over their frostbitten cheeks for ten minutes or so while I read them a story. But school (200 days a year) was never cancelled (except one day during a blizzard; I walked three miles downtown and hitched a ride before reaching the school and learning this), and no one ever stayed away because of the cold. This applied to kids living in the country, too, not just city kids; my brother-in-law attended a rural one-room school and also taught in one for four years. He rode an old horse to school in the winters when he was a student and the snow was particularly deep.

Readers who like books set in the time of The War to End All Wars will find this novel replete with social, as well as political, history. To me, the characters sometimes seem too modern in their conversation, broad knowledge, and general candor, than what one might expect from people living in that time period with the restrictions society then imposed upon individuals.

But their story is always interesting to both men and women, and compelling, and the characters are well delineated.

"The Spare Room" is told by Helen, whose friend, Nicola, suffering from late-stage cancer, asks to stay in her home for three weeks. Nicola has come to Helen's city to seek help through alternative medicine: deplorable and absurd practices which horrify Helen.
What a difficult situation in which to find oneself--and as you read this beautifully written book, you ask yourself how you personally would handle things. Could you be supportive and tolerant? Could you retain your love for a once-vibrant friend as she loses so much? This is a challenging book to read, but it is not without humor and irony, and love and honesty do triumph.

In a style as brisk and astringent as the wind blowing across the Montana plains, McNamer tells the story of brothers Neil and Aidan Tierney. The author is deft at
both delineating characters, and evoking times and places. Book clubs could find grist for the mill here.