Archives by Tag '1990′s'
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: ‘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: ‘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 [...]
Review: ‘The Cigarette Girl’ by Carol Wolper
Elizabeth West is twenty-eight, which means she’s just entered The Zone–that seven-year span in a woman’s life when the pressure to find Mr. Right is at its most intense. For Elizabeth, however, the quest is not about Mr. Right so much as it is about Mr. Maybe. And on some nights, all she’s looking for [...]
Review: ‘Mrs Shakespeare’ by Robert Nye
Writing her memoirs seven years after her husband’s death, Anne Hathaway reminisces about her now-famous husband, recalling in particular that week in April, 1594, when the still-struggling poet and playwright invited her to London to celebrate his thirtieth birthday, and what happened to her in a certain strange bed in his lodgings above a fishmonger’s [...]
Review: ‘Fire and Shadow’ by David Hillier
It is the time of the Third Crusade, and Isabel is about to marry when her parents are murdered. She suspects the Earl de Mortaine is involved, and learns that he is trying to eliminate the king’s supporters while the king is fighting in Jerusalem. Isabel travels there to report what is happening. (Goodreads Summary) [...]