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
Roma Tearne’s The Swimmer HarperPress-HarperCollins, 2010 (Looking for a swallow rather than a full glass? ORANGE Squirt below.) Sometimes the placement of a book in your reading schedule can impact that book negatively; it might unfairly cast a light on shortcomings, either the reader’s or the storyteller’s. (I should have
Leila Aboulela’s Lyrics Alley Harper Collins, 2010 (Looking for a swallow rather than a full glass? ORANGE Squirt below.) Lyrics Alley is set in 1950s Sudan, a few years before it gains independence. It’s a time of intense upheaval politically, but the focus of Leila Aboulela's third novel is personal
