S.J. Watson’s Before I Go to Sleep HarperCollins, 2011 Don’t start reading S.J. Watson’s debut novel before you go to sleep, unless you don’t mind postponing that good night’s sleep you were anticipating. It is, as the blurbs suggest, a page-turner, and you will find it difficult – if not
The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives Lola Shoneyin The Pleasure Seekers Tishani Doshi The Birth of Love Joanna Kavenna The Tiger's Wife Téa Obreht Room Emma Donoghue Swamplandia! - Karen Russell Great House - Nicole Krauss Whatever You Love - Louise Doughty Grace Williams Says it Loud -
Orange Prize Season began with figuring for me. It looked like this: 304+304+321+320+336+288+464+336+336+193+304+289+272+352+602+256+316+256+400+461= Reading the Orange List. And where to go from this string of figures? How to quantify the reading? Now that it's swollen with characters. And settings. And plots. And tigers. Maybe I should tabulate the number of
The postal strike is making it look less and less likely that I'll be able to finish my Orange List reading after all (my own fault for not having ordered when the list was announced). So I'll have to muddle forth with some summaries without having read The Memory of
Téa Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife Weidenfeld & Nicolson-Orion, 2011 (Looking for a swallow rather than a full glass? ORANGE Squirt below.) Here are the elements of Téa Obreht’s debut novel that really worked for me: * Her depiction of a society saturated by war, violence, and loss is solid. “We’re
