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: Literature
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 # 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 # 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 # 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 […]
Book Review # 80: The Golden Compass
Book Specs Author: Philip Pullman Publisher: Laurel-Leaf Publishing Date: 1996 Number of Pages: 351 Genre: Science Fiction, High Fantasy Fiction, Bildungsroman Synopsis Lyra Belacqua is content to run wild among the scholars in Jordan College, her daemon familiar always by her side. But the moment she hears hushed talk of Dust, an extraordinary particle, she’s […]
