Archive for 'Book Review' Category
Review: ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’ by Arthur Golden
Title: Memoirs of a Geisha Author: Arthur Golden Published: Vintage, 1998, pp. 434 Genre: Historical Fiction Blurb: This story is a rare and utterly engaging experience. It tells the extraordinary tale of a geisha – summoning up a quarter century, from 1929 to the post-war years of Japan’s dramatic history, and opening a window onto [...]
Review: ‘A Lion Among Men’ by Gregory Maguire
Title: A Lion Among Men Author: Gregory Maguire Published: Headline Review, 2009, pp. 426 Genre: Fantasy Blurb: While civil war looms in Oz, an oracle named Yackles prepares for death. Before her final hour, the Cowardly Lion arrives searching for information about Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West. Yackles, who hovered on the sidelines [...]
Review: ‘The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear’ by Walter Moers
Title: The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear – Being the biography of a seagoing bear, with numerous illustrations and excerpts from the ‘Encyclopaedia of the Marvels, Life Forms and Other Phenomena of Zamonia and its Environs’ by Professor Abdullah Nightingale Author: Walter Moers, trans. John Brownjohn Published: Vintage, 2001, pp. 704 Genre: Fantasy Blurb: [...]
Review: ‘The Last Time They Met’ by Anita Shreve
Title: The Last Time They Met Author: Anita Shreve Published: Abacus, 2001, pp. 360 Genre: Fiction Blurb: When Linda Fallon and Thomas Janes meet at a writers’ festival in Toronto, it is the first time they have seen each other for twenty-six years. Theirs is a story bound by the irresistible pull of true passion [...]
Review: ‘A Clockwork Orange’ by Anthony Burgess
Title: A Clockwork Orange Author: Anthony Burgess Published: William Heinemann Ltd. for the Independent’s Banned Books series, 2007, pp. 158 Genre: Dystopian fiction Blurb: It’s the near future. In an unnamed city (London? Berlin? Prague?) Alex and his teenage droogs are on the prowl, spending their evenings looking for ultra-violence, rape, even murder. There’s a price [...]
Review: ‘Lady Oracle’ by Margaret Atwood
Title: Lady Oracle Author: Margaret Atwood Published: Virago Press, 1990, pp. 345 Genre: General fiction Blurb: From fat girl to thin, from red hair to mud brown, from London to Toronto, from Polish count to radical husband, from writer of romances to distinguished poet — Joan Foster is utterly confused by her life of multiple [...]
Review: ‘Birds, Beasts and Relatives’ by Gerald Durrell
Title: Birds, Beasts and Relatives Author: Gerald Durrell Published: Fontana, 1971, pp. 220 Genre: Autobiographical wildlife fiction Blurb: All Gerald Durrell’s books are extremely enjoyable. My Family and Other Animals is the best, spun from his family’s five-year sojourn, before thewar, when he was in his early teens on Corfu. In Birds, Beasts and Relatives, [...]
Review: ‘Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day’ by Winifred Watson
Title: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day Author: Winifred Watson Published: Persephone Books, 2008, pp. 234 Genre: Early twentieth century fiction Blurb: Miss Pettigrew is a down-on-her-luck, middle-aged governess sent by her employment agency to work for a nightclub singer rather than a household of unruly children. Over a period of 24 hours her life [...]
Review: ‘The Stone Book Quartet’ by Alan Garner
The four books which make up this volume were first published individually. “As the stories grow into one story, so one’s awareness of the emblems and symbols deepens! Garner binds the reader to him and he shows us the author working with language to make his book as his characters worked with stone and iron. [...]
Review: ‘Death and the Penguin’ by Andrey Kurkov
Victor is depressed: his lover has dumped him, his short stories are too short and the light has gone off in his dingy apartment. His only companion is Misha, the penguin he rescued from Kiev’s Zoo, when it couldn’t feed the animals anymore. Misha is the silent witness to Victor’s despair. Misha joins in his [...]