JoV's Book Pyramid
Historical Novels
The Weight and the Weightlessness
As summer is drawing to a close, I felt a sudden weight on my shoulder thinking about the months ahead of wintery cold and perhaps snow, and the weight that I have to carry by wearing more layers of clothing and reflecting about another year drawing to an end. Hence, I’m combining two novellas reviews … Continue reading
The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif
Ahdaf Soueif’s The Map of Love is a family saga, a story that draws its readers into two different eras in the complex, troubled history of modern Egypt. The story begins in 1997 in New York. There Isabel Parkman discovers an old trunk full of documents, some in English, some in Arabic, in her dying … Continue reading
Black Mamba Boy by Nadifa Mohamed
Nadifa Mohamed’s debut novel, Black Mamba Boy, is set in 1930s Somalia. The novel charts one boy’s long walk to freedom through dangerous, conflict-ridden East Africa, based on the true story of the author’s father’s life. Jama’s mother Ambaro is a strong woman who maintains her pride as she is left to look after Jama … Continue reading
The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
In homer’s account in the Odyssey, Penelope – daughter of King Icarius of Sparta, wife of Odysseus and cousin of the beautiful Helen of Troy is portrayed as the quintessential faithful wife, her story a salutary lesson through the ages. Left alone for 20 years when Odysseus goes off to fight in the Trojan war … Continue reading
Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again… While working as the companion to a rich American woman, Mr. Van Hopper, holidaying on the Monte Carlo, Soon-to-be Mrs De Winter0 becomes acquainted with a wealthy Englishman, Maximilian (Maxim) de Winter. After a fortnight of courtship, she agrees to marry him, and after the marriage … Continue reading
The Heretic’s Daughter by Kathleen Kent
Salem, Massachusetts, 19th August 1692. Martha Carrier was accused, tried and hanged as a witch. The Carrier family, Thomas and Martha, with their children Richard, Andrew, Sarah, Tom and little Hannah move to the village of Salem to stay with their maternal Grandmother. Like her mother, young Sarah Carrier, is bright and willful, openly challenging … Continue reading
Peony in Love
Love is of source unknown, yet it grows ever deeper. The living may die of it, by its power the dead live again. Love is not love at its fullest if one who lives is unwilling to die for it, or if it cannot restore to life one who has died. And must love that … Continue reading
The Piano Tuner
It is my deliberate choice to start another book with a piano theme. A pure coincidence both The Piano Teacher and The Piano Tuner sit on my TBR pile, but a deliberate decision to read them back to back. On a misty London afternoon in 1886, piano tuner Edgar Drake receives a strange request from the … Continue reading
We Are Made of Glue
Sometimes when I try to understand what’s going on in the world, I find myself thinking about glue. Every adhesive interacts with surfaces and with the environment in its own particular ways; some are cured by light, some by hear, some by the exchange of subatomic particles, some simply by the passage of time. The … Continue reading
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
Salmon need cool, well-oxygenated water. The temperature ideally should not exceed 18 degree Celsius. If it is too hot, the oxygen will leave the water and the fish will die. The best conditions are rivers fed by snow melt or springs. Salmon fishing in Yemen.. hmmm.. how could that happen? Sounds absurd. Absurd is what … Continue reading
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Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking. - Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)
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