Category: International Literature

The Dinner

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The Dinner copyHerman Koch, an author from the Netherlands, writes a riveting novel about two families who meet for dinner to discuss an urgent family matter – their teenage sons are in big trouble. What will they do about it? How is it affecting their relationships? What are the consequences of their decisions? There are sinister undertones that make you wonder if you are getting a subjective view of the story.

The story delves into the nuances of using public media and the teenage propensity to share and brag. You can justify pretty much anything if you twist your reasoning enough.

A chilling similarity to this real-life story this April 2015.

The Chemistry of Tears

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“In his most recent novel, The Chemistry of Tears, Carey is concerned with nothing less than the fate of the earth. The story of a contemporary museum curator who is restoring an automaton – a clockwork silver swan – takes place in 2010, the year the BP oil spill threatened environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. A parallel story takes place in the 19th century – as Henry Brandling struggles to get the swan made as a gift for his consumptive son.

“If you ask why are you interested in the 19th century, I would say, because we’re living in it,” Carey said in an interview with CBC News. “We’re living with the consequences of it. We argue with the 19th century capitalists, growth is good – we still talk like that…”‘   Susan Noakes  CBC link

Read the New York Times review HERE

The Red House

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Mark Haddon is known for his book, the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. What do you get when you mix two families that barely know one another in a century farmhouse in the English countryside. This includes, of course, a saucy fashionista teenage girl and a brooding young teenage boy.

Entertaining and insightful, a great read.

The History of the Kelly Gang

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Booker prize winning novel is a true gem. If you love an old fashioned western with the rich land barons and the new “law” persecuting the poor farmers and ranchers, then this novel is for you.

Excerpt from author’s site:

To his own people, the lowly class of ordinary Australians, the bushranger is a hero, defying the authority of the English to direct their lives. Indentured by his bootlegger mother to a famous horse thief (who was also her lover), Ned saw his first prison cell at 15 and by the age of 26 had become the most wanted man in the wild colony of Victoria, taking over whole towns and defying the law until he was finally captured and hanged. Here is a classic outlaw tale, made alive by the skill of a great novelist. Sample the novel HERE

Theft: A Love Story

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Peter Carey writes an extraordinary story of art, intrique and murder. Carey has the uncanny ability to create two completely different points of view with the two brothers in the novel, Michael Butcher and his younger brother Hugh.

Excerpt from author’s site:

Michael “Butcher” Boone is an ex-“really famous” painter, now reduced to living in a remote country house and acting as caretaker for his younger brother, Hugh. Alone together they’ve forged a delicate equilibrium, a balance instantly destroyed when a mysterious young woman named Marlene walks out of a rainstorm and into their lives. Beautiful, smart, and ambitious, she’s also the daughter-in-law of the late great painter Jacques Liebovitz. Soon Marlene sets in motion a chain of events that could be the making–or the ruin–of them all.

You can sample the book HERE