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Tag Archives: books Leanne will like

Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason

Posted by Kate W in Fiction and tagged with 2020, Australian, AWW, AWW2020, book review, books Leanne will like, books that made me cry, fiction, Meg Mason, reading challenge, review September 8, 2020

You might be surprised to know that I rarely get so engrossed in a book that I’m reading for hours – I think there’s an assumption that people who ‘read lots of books’ devote great rafts of time to the pursuit. I wish that were the case! In reality, my reading is done in short bursts – ten minutes at breakfast and lunch, a couple of five minute ‘power-reads’ during the day, and then half an hour before I sleep. But occasionally, I have to put everything on hold because I’ve become absolutely engrossed in a book. Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason was such a book.

It’s the story of Martha. Martha knows there is something wrong with her but she doesn’t know what it is. Her husband, Patrick, thinks she is fine, and that the important thing is that life carries on – 

‘Martha… everything is broken and messed up, and completely fine. That is what life is. It’s only the ratios that change. Usually on their own. As soon as you think that’s it, it’s going to be like this forever, they change again.’

Patrick’s response to Martha’s struggle is borne from his love for her, rather than pig-headed denial, and much of the emotional energy in the story is directed toward the particular issue of wanting to be ‘well’ for the people we love; and the feelings of guilt and anxiety that go along with that.

I was desperate to cancel. But he bought a Lonely Planet. He had been reading it in bed every night and as ill and scared as I was, I couldn’t bear to disappoint someone whose desires were so modest they could be circled in pencil. Continue reading →

17 Comments

Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Posted by Kate W in Fiction and tagged with 2019, American, audiobook, book review, books Leanne will like, fiction, historical, Laura Barnett, music, review, Taylor Jenkins Reid, television October 29, 2019

Well that was a bit of fun!

You’ll see Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid popping up on all sorts of ‘best of’ and ‘beach reads’ lists at the end of the year, and I can understand why. It’s the story of the rise of a rock band in the seventies, with a particular focus on singer Daisy Jones. She’s a wild child, beautiful and talented –

So this is a girl that desperately wants to connect. But there’s no one in her life who is truly interested in who she is, especially not her parents. And it really breaks her. But it is also how she grows up to become a icon. Continue reading →

9 Comments

Two that surprised me

Posted by Kate W in Fiction and tagged with 2019, American, audiobook, Australian, AWW, AWW2019, book review, books Leanne will like, books that made me cry, fiction, grief-lit, Meg Wolitzer, Melina Marchetta, reading challenge, review August 23, 2019

The first I thought would be lightweight (of the chick-lit variety). The second I thought might be like her last (lots of hype, but lacking something). I was wrong about both. Continue reading →

7 Comments

A Perfect Explanation by Eleanor Anstruther

Posted by Kate W in Fiction and tagged with 2019, audiobook, book review, books Leanne will like, British, debut, fiction, grief-lit, historical, review August 8, 2019

On his retirement, my dad did what many new-retirees do – research the family tree. There were no surprises apart from discovering that a child was born out of wedlock, raised by his grandmother as her own, and grew up not knowing that his ‘sister’ was in fact his biological mother. On a spectrum of family scandals, it’s lightweight.

Author Eleanor Anstruther had a lot more material to work with, and the result is her fictionalised family history, A Perfect Explanation. Essentially, Anstruther’s father, Ian, was sold to his Aunt Joan for £500. The story also includes postnatal depression, Christian Science, a kidnapping, much family bitterness, a long legal battle, and a large emerald ring. Continue reading →

9 Comments

Laura & Emma by Kate Greathead

Posted by Kate W in Fiction and tagged with 2019, American, book review, books Leanne will like, debut, eighties, fiction, Kate Greathead, nineties, review May 16, 2019

The cover of Laura & Emma by Kate Greathead suggests a story that is gentle and relatively undemanding but beyond the pastels is a thoughtful examination of the relationships between mothers and daughters, complete with the funny and loving moments, the frustrations and complexities, and the sadnesses.

It begins in 1980, New York City, with Laura who is Park Avenue born and bred. Laura considers herself progressive – she is deeply concerned about the environment; lives in Harlem (well, on the border); uses the subway and shops locally. Yet she has a cushy job via the family trust and her mortgage is paid for by her parents – the slightly eccentric Bibs and the formidable Doug.

After an out-of-character casual encounter, Laura discovers she is pregnant and decides to keep the baby. Bibs falsely informs her society friends that the baby is fathered by a Swedish sperm donor although she’s not opposed to Laura’s single status, saying of marriage, “It doesn’t matter who you marry, one day you’ll be sitting across the table from him thinking, Anything would be better than this.” Continue reading →

2 Comments

Tin Man by Sarah Winman

Posted by Kate W in Fiction and tagged with 2019, book review, books Leanne will like, books that made me cry, British, fiction, review, Sarah Winman February 19, 2019

Tin Man by Sarah Winman is a simple story about two friends.

Ellis and Michael are twelve when they first meet. Their family circumstances, although very different, become a bonding point and their friendship grows over many years. However, from the beginning of the book, we know that there is a gap in Ellis and Michael’s shared history and the reasons for that break are slowly unravelled.

Winman moves the story back and forth over time, revealing the events that shaped the boys’ friendship. There are a number of twists in this relatively short novel and if I listed them, the story could be perceived as overly dramatic. In fact, it is quite the opposite – it is plausible, gently paced and Winman delivers the blows with a velvet hammer (brace yourself, there are bits to make you cry).

And I wonder what the sound of a heart breaking might be. And I think it might be quiet, unperceptively so, and not dramatic at all. Like the sound of an exhausted swallow falling gently to earth.
Continue reading →

16 Comments

Music & Silence by Rose Tremain

Posted by Kate W in Fiction and tagged with 2018, book review, books Leanne will like, British, Costa Book Award, fiction, historical, reading challenge, review, Rose Tremain, Whitbread Award June 25, 2018

Imagine a good soap opera (that’s not an oxymoron).

Now imagine that it’s set in the seventeenth century.

In Denmark.

And that it’s really, really well written.

You’d be thinking of Rose Tremain’s Music & Silence, wouldn’t you?! Continue reading →

18 Comments

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

Posted by Kate W in Fiction and tagged with 2018, book group, book review, books Leanne will like, fiction, Gail Honeyman, review, Scottish May 15, 2018

You know when someone asks how you are and you say “Fine”, despite the fact that your day/week/month/year has been completely shit?

That basically sums up the main character in Gail Honeyman’s smash debut, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine. Obviously Eleanor Oliphant isn’t fine. In fact, she’s a lonely young woman, set in her rather odd ways. A chain of events forces her to re-evaluate life.

I enjoyed Eleanor’s odd take on things and her formal, stilted interactions with others were strangely endearing.

Save for the exquisite oeuvre of a certain Mr Lomond, I have yet to find a genre of music I enjoy; it’s basically audible physics, waves and energized particles, and, like most sane people, I have no interest in physics. It therefore struck me as bizarre that I was humming a tune from Oliver! I mentally added the exclamation mark, which, for the first time ever, was appropriate. Continue reading →

24 Comments

All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg

Posted by Kate W in Fiction and tagged with 2018, American, art, book review, books Leanne will like, chick-lit, fiction, Jami Attenberg, review January 12, 2018

It might be pitched as light and frothy, a la Sex and the City, but Jami Attenberg’s third novel, All Grown Up, tackles big issues, goes to some dark places and doesn’t provide the New-York-fairy-tale ending that you might expect.

Andrea Bern is struggling with her identity.

For most people, moving to New York City is a gesture of ambition. But for you, it signifies failure, because you grew up there, so it just means you’re moving back home after you couldn’t make it in the world. Spiritually, it’s a reverse commute. Continue reading →

4 Comments

Between a Wolf and a Dog by Georgia Blain

Posted by Kate W in Fiction and tagged with Australian, AWW, AWW2017, book review, books Leanne will like, books that made me cry, fiction, Georgia Blain, review, Stella Prize April 16, 2017

Sometimes a book comes along at exactly the right time and it’s exactly the book you want to read. Such was the case with Georgia Blain’s Between a Wolf and a Dog.

The story takes place predominantly over one rainy day. Ester is a single mother to twin girls and works as a family therapist.

“It’s rare that she hears about love in her consulting room. Most of her clients talk of anger, failure, boredom, depression, conflict: the flipside of love.”

Although Ester spends her days helping others find happiness, her own family relationships are in disarray. She’s estranged from her directionless sister, April, and also from her ex-husband, Lawrence, whose reckless decisions are catching up with him. Ester and April’s mother, Hilary, is desperate for her daughters to reconcile.

The delicacy and brilliance of this book is captured in the title, translated from the French phrase, ‘l’heure entre chien et loupe’. Literally, ‘the hour between dog and wolf’, it refers to twilight, the time when distinguishing between a dog and a wolf might be tricky. The title reveals the duality of Blain’s story – friend and foe; outward calm and inner turmoil; what to discard and what to keep; safety and danger; what we reveal and what we keep hidden. Continue reading →

15 Comments
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