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 […]
Tag: Bookish
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 # 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 […]
Book Review # 83: The Subtle Knife
Book Specs Author: Philip Pullman Publisher: Laurel-Leaf Publishing Date: 1997 Number of Pages: 288 Genre: Science Fiction, High Fantasy Fiction, Bildungsroman Synopsis The intrepid young Lyra has passed through a shimmering portal in the sky and finds herself in a beautiful, haunted otherworld – Cittagazze, where soul-eating Specters stalk the streets and wingbeats of distant […]
Book Review # 82: The Ask and the Answer
Book Specs Author: Patrick Ness Publisher: Walker Books Ltd. Publishing Date: 2009 Number of Pages: 517 Genre: Young Adult Fiction, Dystopian, Science Fiction Synopsis Fleeing before a relentless army, Todd and Viola once again face their worst enemy, Mayor Prentiss. Immediately imprisoned and separated from Viola, Todd is forced to learn the ways of the […]
Book Review # 81: Neverwhere
Book Specs Author: Neil Gaiman Publisher: William Morrow Publishing Date: 2016 Number of Pages: 384 pages Genre: Urban Fantasy, Fantasy Fiction, Young Adult Fiction Synopsis Under the streets of London lies a world most people could never dream of. When Richard Mayhew helps a mysterious girl he finds bleeding on the pavement, his boring life changes […]
