Book Specs Author: Jonas Jonasson Translator: Rod Bradbury Publisher: Hesperus Nova Publishing Date: 2014 Number of Pages: 387 Genre: Humor/Comic Fiction Synopsis Sitting quietly in his room in an old people’s home, Allan Karlsson is waiting for a party he doesn’t want to begin. His one-hundredth birthday party to be precise. The Mayor will be there. The […]
Tag: Book Review
Book Review # 92: The Sea
Book Specs Author: John Banville Publisher: Picador Publishing Date: 2005 Number of Pages: 264 pages Genre: Novel Synopsis When art historian Max Morden returns to the seaside village where he once spent a childhood holiday, he is both escaping from a recent loss and confronting a distant trauma. The Grace family had appeared that long-ago […]
Book Review # 91: Cloud Atlas
Book Specs Author: David Mitchell Publisher: Random House Publishing Date: 2004 Number of Pages: 509 Genre: Metafiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy Synopsis A postmodern visionary who is also a master of styles and genres, David Mitchell combines flat-out adventure, a Nabokovian love of puzzles, a keen eye for character, and a taste for mind-bending philosophical and […]
Book Review # 90: The Blind Assassin
Book Specs Author: Margaret Atwood Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Date: 2000 Number of Pages: 521 Genre: Historical Fiction Synopsis ‘Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.’ Thus begins The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood’s stunning new novel. Laura Chase’s older sister Iris, married at eighteen to a politically prominent […]
Book Review # 89: The English Patient
Book Specs Author: Michael Ondaatje Publisher: Vintage International Publishing Date: December 1993 Number of Pages: 302 Genre: Historiographic metafiction Synopsis With unsettling beauty and intelligence, Michael Ondaatje’s Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an abandoned Italian villa at the end of World War II. The nurse Hana, exhausted by death, […]
Book Review # 88: Murder on the Orient Express
Book Specs Author: Agatha Christie Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks Publishing Date: January 18, 2011 Number of Pages: 288 Genre: Mystery Fiction, Suspense Fiction, Detective Fiction Synopsis Just after midnight, the famous Orient Express is stopped in its tracks by a snowdrift. By morning, the millionaire Samuel Edward Ratchett lies dead in his compartment, stabbed a […]
Book Review # 87: Disgrace
Book Specs Author: J.M. Coetzee Publisher: Secker & Warburg Publishing Date: 1999 Number of Pages: 220 Genre: Literary Fiction, Novel Synopsis David Lurie, middle-aged and twice divorced, is a scholar fallen into disgrace. After years teaching Romantic poetry at the Technical University of Cape Town, he has an impulsive affair with a student. The affair […]
Book Review # 86: The Amber Spyglass
Book Specs Author: Philip Pullman Publisher: Laurel-Leaf Books Publishing Date: 2000 Number of Pages: 465 Genre: Young Adult Fiction, High Fantasy Fiction, Scientific Fiction Synopsis Lyra and Will, two ordinary children on an extraordinary and otherworldly quest, have fallen into unspeakable danger. With help from the armored bear Iorek Byrnison and two tiny Gallivespian spies, […]
Book Review # 85: The Sea, The Sea
Book Specs Author: Iris Murdoch Publisher: Vintage Publishing Date: 1999 Number of Pages: 502 pages Genre: Psychological Fiction, Philosophical Fiction Synopsis The sea: turbulent and leaden; transparent and opaque; magician and mother. When Charles Arrowby, over sixty, a demi-god of the theatre – director, playwright and actor – retires from his glittering London world in order […]
Book Review # 84: Monsters of Men
Book Specs Author: Patrick Ness Publisher: Walker Books Ltd. Publishing Date: 2010 Number of Pages: 603 Genre: Young Adult Fiction, Science Fiction, Dystopian Synopsis “War,” says the Mayor. “At last.” Three armies march on New Prentisstown, each one intent on destroying the others. Todd and Viola are caught in the middle, with no chance of […]
