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183. The Railwayman’s Wife

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Ashley Hay

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction

288 pages, published April 5, 2016

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Set in post World War II 1948 in the small Australian town of Thirroul, The Railwayman’s Wife follows the intersecting lives of three individuals.  Anikka Lachlan is a widow who is left to raise her daughter alone when her husband Mac is killed in a railway accident.  Roy McKinnon is a poet who has lost hope after the war, but finds poetry again when he falls for Anikka.  Frank Draper is a doctor who is weighed down by guilt of those he couldn’t save.

 

Quotes 

“There’s some comfort in seeing things go on; birds keep singing, buses keep running. But if you want those things to continue, perhaps you have to accept that the other kinds of things, unhappier, even horrific ones, will continue too. And that’s harder.”

 

“The oceans and the skies…and the sun coming up each new day. That’s all there is, I think. That’s all that matters to think on.”

 

“That is marriage, he thought, remaking yourself in someone else’s image. And who knew where the truth of it began or would end?”

 

“Such fascinating things, libraries.  She closes her eyes.  She could walk inside and step into a murder, a love story, a complete account of somebody else’s life, or mutiny on the high seas. Such potential; such adventure—there’s a shimmer of malfeasance in trying other ways of being.”

 

“How would you start to write a poem? How would you put together a series of words for its first line—how would you know which words to choose? When you read a poem, every word seemed so perfect that it had to have been predestined—well, a good poem.”

 

My Take

The Railwayman’s Wife is a beautifully written, poetic novel about loss, grief, and trying to move on with your life by Australian writer Ashley Hay.  The part of the novel that I enjoyed the most was a lovely and enchanting poem entitled “Lost World” which was specifically written for this book by Australian poet Stephen Edgar.  I’ve tried in vain to find it on-line so that I could post it with this review.  If you want to check it out, you will just have to read this recommended book.

 

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180. Brooklyn

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Colm Tóibín

Genre:  Historical Fiction, Fiction, Romance

288 pages, published September 8, 2015

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Brooklyn tells the story of Eilis (pronounced eye-liss) Lacey, a young woman who travels from a small town in Ireland to Brooklyn, New York in the years following World War II.  Eilis leaves behind her mother and her beloved sister Rose (her brothers had already left for England after their father died) when she is sponsored by an Irish priest from Brooklyn to live in the United States.  We follow Eilis as she makes her way in a transatlantic crossing on a ocean liner, lives in a boarding house with other young women, gets a job in a department store, takes accounting classes and falls in love with Tony, a sweet boy from a big Italian family.  When Eilis must return to Ireland in response to a family crisis, she is forced to choose between her comfortable life over there and her new, challenging life in America.

 

Quotes 

“What she would need to do in the days before she left and on the morning of her departure was smile, so that they would remember her smiling.”

 

“She thought it was strange that the mere sensation of savouring the prospect of something could make her think for a while that is must be the prospect of home.”

 

“Carefully, she went back up the stairs and found that if she moved along the first landing she would be able to see him from above. Somehow, she thought, if she could look at him, take him in clearly when he was not trying to amuse her or impress her, something would come to her, some knowledge, or some ability to make a decision.”

 

“She felt almost guilty that she had handed some of her grief to him, and then she felt close to him for his willingness to take it and hold it, in all its rawness, all its dark confusion.”

 

“Some people are nice and if you talk to them properly, they can be even nicer.”

 

“We keep our prices low and our manners high.”

 

“What she loved most about America, Eilis thought on these mornings, was how the heating was kept on all night.”

 

“She has gone back to Brooklyn,’ her mother would say. And, as the train rolled past Macmire Bridge on its way towards Wexford, Eilis imagined the years already when these words would come to mean less and less to the man who heard them and would come to mean more and more to herself. She almost smiled at the thought of it, then closed her eyes and tried to imagine nothing more.”

 

My Take

At the beginning of 2016, I saw the movie version of Brooklyn and was enchanted by the simple, sweet tale of a young Irish woman who must choose between a new, challenging life in the United States and her life in Ireland which was comfortable, but with less opportunity and adventure.  After finishing the book, I can report that it is just as good as the movie.  Sometimes, a simple story that is well told can be the satisfying read.  That was the case here and I recommend you check out both the book and movie.

 

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178. Magpie Murders

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:   Michael Koss

Author:   Anthony Horowitz

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Crime, Thriller, Suspense

496 pages, published June 6, 2017

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

When editor Susan Ryeland is given the manuscript of Alan Conway’s latest mystery novel, she has no reason to think it will be much different from any of his others.  After working with the bestselling crime writer for years, she’s intimately familiar with his detective, Atticus Pünd, who solves mysteries that occur in quaint English villages.  In the vein of Agatha Christie, Alan’s traditional formula has proved hugely successful.  When the new book (which is included for us to read) abruptly ends before the dénouement, things start to get very interesting as we are thrust into a completely different, yet inherently related, murder mystery.

 

Quotes 

“But I’m not sure it actually matters what we read. Our lives continue along the straight lines that have been set out for us. Fiction merely allows us a glimpse of the alternative. Maybe that’s one of the reasons we enjoy it.”

 

“You must know that feeling when it’s raining outside and the heating’s on and you lose yourself, utterly, in a book. You read and you read and you feel the pages slipping through your fingers until suddenly there are fewer in your right hand than there are in your left and you want to slow down but you still hurtle on towards a conclusion you can hardly bear to discover.”

 

“Rumours and malicious gossip are like bindweed. They cannot be cut back, even with the sword of truth. I can, however, offer you this comfort. Given time, they will wither and die of their own volition.”

 

“It’s strange when you think about it. There are hundreds and hundreds of murders in books and television. It would be hard for narrative fiction to survive without them. And yet there are almost none in real life, unless you happen to live in the wrong area. Why is it that we have such a need for murder mystery? And what is it that attracts us? The crime, or the solution? Do we have some primal need of bloodshed because our own lives are so safe, so comfortable?”

 

“As far as I’m concerned, you can’t beat a good whodunnit: the twists and turns, the clues and the red herrings and then, finally, the satisfaction of having everything explained to you in a way that makes you kick yourself because you hadn’t seen it from the start.”

 

“he had expressed the belief that everything in life had a pattern and that a coincidence was simply the moment when that pattern became briefly visible.”

 

“I had chosen to play the detective—and if there is one thing that unites all the detectives I’ve ever read about, it’s their inherent loneliness. The suspects know each other. They may well be family or friends. But the detective is always the outsider. He asks the necessary questions but he doesn’t actually form a relationship with anyone. He doesn’t trust them, and they in turn are afraid of him. It’s a relationship based entirely on deception and it’s one that, ultimately, goes nowhere. Once the killer has been identified, the detective leaves and is never seen again. In fact, everyone is glad to see the back of him.”

 

“One can think of the truth as eine vertiefung – a sort of deep valley which may not be visible from a distance but which will come upon you quite suddenly. There are many ways to arrive there.”

 

“I held out the packet and suddenly we were friends. That’s one of the only good things about being a smoker these days. You’re part of a persecuted minority. You bond easily.”

 

My Take

I thoroughly enjoyed the fiendishly clever and enigmatic Magpie Murders.  In fact, for four straight hours I couldn’t put it down until I finished it.  Having previously created the Alex Rider books, the television series Foyle’s War and having written for Midsomer Murders and Poirot, Author Anthony Horowitz, OBE, is as prolific as he is talented.  If you like murder mysteries, then you must check out Magpie Murders.  Highly recommended.

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177. The Book That Matters Most

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Ann Hood

Genre:  Fiction, Romance

358 pages, published August 9, 2016

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

After her 25 year marriage has fallen apart when her husband leaves her for another woman and with her two grown children pursuing their own lives outside of the country, Ava is at loose ends.  She joins a book group, looking for companionship and a place to get her moorings.  When Ava’s friend and the book group’s leader announces that the year’s theme is for each member to present the book that matters most to them, Ava rediscovers a book from her childhood that helped her through the untimely deaths of her sister and mother. Alternating with Ava’s story is that of her troubled daughter Maggie, who, living in Paris, descends into a destructive relationship with an older man.  Ava’s mission to find that book and its enigmatic author takes her on a quest that unravels the secrets of her past and offers her and Maggie the chance to remake their lives.

 

Quotes 

“It mattered most to me then because of where I was in my life. So in a way, there isn’t just one book that matters most, there might be several, or even a dozen.”

 

“When you read a book, and who you are when you read it, makes it matter or not.”

 

“Could a writer understand how her book had saved someone long ago, when the world was a fragile, scary place and the people she loved weren’t in it anymore? Could a writer understand that her book had mattered more than anything?”

 

“If you wait long enough, someone had told him once, you settle into being married.”

 

My Take

As a book lover, I was intrigued to listen to The Book That Matters Most.  In fact, the thing I liked most about this book was seeing what book was chosen by each character as mattering most in their lives.  I also loved To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, and Catcher in the Rye.  I haven’t read the other selections (Pride and Prejudice, Anna Karenina, Slaughter House Five, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, One Hundred Years of Solitude, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn), but am intrigued to do so after finishing The Book That Matters Most.  The other parts of the book that focus on Eva and her daughter were fine, but a bit clichéd.

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176. Rules of Civility

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Amor Towles

Genre:  Historical Fiction, Fiction

335 pages, published July 26, 2011

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

On the last night of 1937, boarding house roommates and friends Katey Kontent and Eve Ross are at a Greenwich Village jazz bar when they meet Tinker Grey, a handsome banker with blue eyes and a winning smile. This chance encounter and its startling consequences propel Katey on a yearlong journey from her work as a law firm secretary to  pool to the upper echelons of New York society and the executive suites of Condé Nast. Katey experiences a world of wealth firsthand and discovers that there is often more to things and people than first meets the eye.

 

Quotes 

“In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisions—we draw a card, and we must decide right then and there whether to keep that card and discard the next, or discard the first card and keep the second. And before we know it, the deck has been played out and the decisions we have just made will shape our lives for decades to come.”

 

“Whatever setbacks he had faced in his life, he said, however daunting or dispiriting the unfolding of events, he always knew that he would make it through, as long as when he woke in the morning he was looking forward to his first cup of coffee. Only decades later would I realize that he had been giving me a piece of advice.”

 

“Uncompromising purpose and the search for eternal truth have an unquestionable sex appeal for the young and high-minded; but when a person loses the ability to take pleasure in the mundane–in the cigarette on the stoop or the gingersnap in the bath–she had probably put herself in unnecessary danger.”

 

“As a quick aside, let me observe that in moments of high emotion….if the next thing you’re going to say makes you feel better, then it’s probably the wrong thing to say. This is one of the finer maxims that I’ve discovered in life. And you can have it, since it’s been of no use to me.”

 

“Most people have more needs than wants. That’s why they live the lives they do. But the world is run by those whose wants outstrip their needs.”

 

“The principle here is that a new generation owes a measure of thanks to every member of the previous generation. Our elders planted fields and fought in wars; they advanced the arts and sciences, and generally made sacrifices on our behalf. So by their efforts, however humble, they have earned a measure of our gratitude and respect.”

 

“For better or worse, there are few things so disarming as one who laughs well at her own expense.”

 

“Slurring is the cursive of speech…”

 

“Because when some incident sheds a favorable light on an old and absent friend, that’s about as good a gift as chance intends to offer.”                                     

 

“Right from the first, I could see a calmness in you – that sort of inner tranquility that they write about in books, but that almost no one seems to possess. I was wondering to myself: How does she do that? And I figured it could only come from having no regrets – from having made choices with …. such poise and purpose.”

 

“—I probably shouldn’t tell you this, I said.

—Kay-Kay, those are my six favorite words in the English language.”

 

“After all, what can a first impression tell us about someone we’ve just met for a minute in the lobby of a hotel? For that matter, what can a first impression tell us about anyone? Why, no more than a chord can tell us about Beethoven, or a brushstroke about Botticelli. By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration—and our unwavering determination to withhold our opinion until we have engaged with them in every possible setting at every possible hour.”

 

“For as it turns out, one can revisit the past quite pleasantly, as long as one does so expecting nearly every aspect of it to have changed.”

 

“Anyone who has ridden the subway twice a day to earn their bread knows how it goes: When you board, you exhibit the same persona you use with your colleagues and acquaintances. You’ve carried it through the turnstile and past the sliding doors, so that your fellow passengers can tell who you are – cocky or cautious, amorous or indifferent, loaded or on the dole. But you find yourself a seat and the train gets under way; it comes to one station and then another; people get off and others get on. And under the influence of the cradlelike rocking of the train, your carefully crafted persona begins to slip away. The super-ego dissolves as your mind begins to wander aimlessly over your cares and your dreams; or better yet, it drifts into ambient hypnosis, where even cares and dreams recede and the peaceful silence of the cosmos pervades.”

 

“Really. Is there anything nice to be said about other people’s vacations?”

 

“For however inhospitable the wind, from this vantage point Manhattan was simply so improbable, so wonderful, so obviously full of promise – that you wanted to approach it for the rest of your life without ever quite arriving.”

 

“If we only fell in love with people who were perfect for us…then there wouldn’t be so much fuss about love in the first place.”

 

“…be careful when choosing what you’re proud of–because the world has every intention of using it against you.”

 

“That’s the problem with living in New York. You’ve got no New York to run away to.”

 

My Take

Published in 2011, Rules of Civility won The New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association (NAIBA) Fiction Book of the Year award.   After reading it, I can understand why.  While the plot meanders all over the place, you cannot help but be impressed by the quality of Amor Towles’ writing.  Just look at the quotes I pulled out.  The man knows how to write.  I didn’t like Rules of Civility as much as his recent A Gentlemen in Moscow (which garnered a rare five stars from me), but I still really enjoyed it and can wholeheartedly recommend it.

 

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174. The Cuckoo’s Calling

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:   Boulder Librarian

Author:   Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Crime, Thriller, Suspense

455 pages, published April 30, 2013

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

While The Cuckoo’s Calling, a murder mystery and book one of a series featuring private detective Cormoran Strike, lists the author as Robert Galbraith, that is a pseudonym.  It is actually written by J. K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame.  The book opens with Detective Strike hired to investigate the death of supermodel Lula Landry (known to her friends as the Cuckoo) which has been ruled a suicide by the police.  After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator.  He is down to one client, has creditors on his back, has just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and is living in his office.  The Landry case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers.

 

Quotes 

“Seven and a half million hearts were beating in close proximity in this heaving old city, and many, after all, would be aching far worse than his.”

 

“Other people his age had houses and washing machines, cars and television sets, furniture and gardens and mountain bikes and lawnmowers: he had four boxes of crap, and a set of matchless memories.”

 

“You’re like everyone else, Strike; you want your civil liberties when you’ve told the missus you’re at the office and you’re at a lap-dancing club, but you want twenty-four-hour surveillance on your house when someone’s trying to force your bathroom window open. Can’t have it both ways.”

 

“Humans often assumed symmetry and equality where none existed.”

 

“In the inverted food chain of fame, it was the big beasts who were stalked and hunted.”

 

“The dead could only speak through the mouths of those left behind, and through the signs they left scattered behind them.”

 

“When you are young, and beautiful, you can be very cruel.”

 

“There’s people who’d expect you to take a bullet for them and they don’t bother rememb’ring yuh name.”

 

“Couples tended to be of roughly equivalent personal attractiveness, though of course factors such as money often seemed to secure a partner of significantly better looks than oneself.”

 

“Strike was used to playing archaeologist among the ruins of people’s traumatised memories;”

 

“I am become a name.”

 

My Take

When my son Nick was in Elementary School (he is currently a college student), he and I read all of the Harry Potter books together and we both loved living in the wildly inventive and fantastic world created by J.K. Rowling.  Based in modern day London, Rowling has created a different type of world in The Cuckoo’s Calling, one that I also enjoyed inhabiting during the almost 16 hours that I spent listening to the audio book version.  The Cuckoo’s Calling has everything you could want from a mystery/suspense/thriller:  compelling and real characters, a gritty plot that hums along at a rapid clip, an inside look at a world different from the one you inhabit, plenty of red herrings to keep you guessing and some surprise twists at the end.  It’s no surprise that I’m looking forward to reading book 2 in this series.

 

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172. Then Came You

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Jennifer Weiner

Genre:  Fiction

400 pages, published July 12, 2011

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

The lives of four very different women intertwine in unexpected ways in Then Came You.  Each woman has a problem: Princeton senior Jules Wildgren needs money to help her dad with one final shot at rehab.  Pennsylvania housewife Annie Barrow needs money to stay financially afloat.  In her early 40’s and unable to conceive, India Bishop wants to have a child.  India’s stepdaughter Bettina wants her original family back.  Through egg donation and surrogacy, we follow the stories of these four interesting women.

 

Quotes 

“The thing about bad decisions is that they don’t feel like bad decisions when you’re making them. They feel like the obvious choice, the of-course-that-makes-sense move. They feel, somehow, inevitable.”

 

My Take

Then Came You is a quick, fun, light read.  I enjoyed all of the characters and scenarios created by Jennifer Weiner and was interested in seeing how she would wrap up the story (she inserts an obligatory twist).  However, it is a bit on the fluffy side and has not stayed with me several weeks after finishing.

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171. Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Robin Sloan

Genre:  Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery

288 pages, published October 2, 2012

Reading Format:  Audiobook on Hoopla

 

Summary

The Great Recession finds protagonist Clay Jannon working in the San Francisco bookshop known as Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore.  Clay soon discovers that there is more to Mr. Penumbra and his bookstore than meets the eye.   There are only a few customers, but they come in repeatedly and never seem to actually buy anything, instead “checking out” obscure volumes from strange corners of the store, all according to some elaborate, long-standing arrangement with the enigmatic Mr. Penumbra.  A curious Clay and his archetypical friends (including a love interest who works for Google) embark on an adventure to discover the secrets hidden inside Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore.

 

Quotes 

“After that, the book will fade, the way all books fade in your mind. But I hope you will remember this:  A man walking fast down a dark lonely street. Quick steps and hard breathing, all wonder and need. A bell above a door and the tinkle it makes. A clerk and a ladder and warm golden light, and then: the right book exactly, at exactly the right time.”

 

“Walking the stacks in a library, dragging your fingers across the spines — it’s hard not to feel the presence of sleeping spirits.”

 

“…this is exactly the kind of store that makes you want to buy a book about a teenage wizard. This is the kind of store that makes you want to be a teenage wizard.”

 

“Why does the typical adventuring group consist of a wizard, a warrior, and a rogue, anyway? It should really be a wizard, a warrior, and a rich guy. Otherwise who’s going to pay for all the swords and spells and hotel rooms?”

 

“But I kept at it with the help-wanted ads. My standards were sliding swiftly. At first I had insisted I would only work at a company with a mission I believed in. Then I thought maybe it would be fine as long as I was learning something new. After that I decided it just couldn’t be evil. Now I was carefully delineating my personal definition of evil.”

 

“You know, I’m really starting to think the whole world is just a patchwork quilt of crazy little cults, all with their own secret spaces, their own records, their own rules.”

 

“I’ve never listened to an audiobook before, and I have to say it’s a totally different experience. When you read a book, the story definitely takes place in your head. When you listen, it seems to happen in a little cloud all around it, like a fuzzy knit cap pulled down over your eyes.”

 

“Let me give you some advice: make friends with a millionaire when he’s a friendless sixth-grader.”

 

“So I guess you could say Neel owes me a few favors, except that so many favors have passed between us now that they are no longer distinguishable as individual acts, just a bright haze of loyalty. Our friendship is a nebula.”

 

“Have you ever played Maximum Happy Imagination?”

“Sounds like a Japanese game show.”

Kat straightens her shoulders. “Okay, we’re going to play. To start, imagine the future. The good future. No nuclear bombs. Pretend you’re a science fiction writer.”

Okay: “World government… no cancer… hover-boards.”

“Go further. What’s the good future after that?”

“Spaceships. Party on Mars.”

“Further.”

“Star Trek. Transporters. You can go anywhere.”

“Further.”

“I pause a moment, then realize: “I can’t.”

Kat shakes her head. “It’s really hard. And that’s, what, a thousand years? What comes after that? What could possibly come after that? Imagination runs out. But it makes sense, right? We probably just imagine things based on what we already know, and we run out of analogies in the thirty-first century.”

 

“… nothing lasts long. We all come to life and gather allies and build empires and die, all in a single moment – maybe a single pulse of some giant processor somewhere.”

  

My Take

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore was an entertaining audio book (I especially enjoyed the voice of narrator Ari Fliakos).  The characters are engaging, there is an appealing fantasy oriented plot and there is a nice little romantic connection between the main character and a charming girl from Google.  However, while it was enjoyable to listen to at the time, once finished, it fades quickly, leaving not much to remember.   A far superior book in this genre is Ready Player One.

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170. The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:   Heather Bohart

Author:   Jennifer Ryan

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction, World War II

371 pages, published February 14, 2017

Reading Format:  E-Book on Overdrive

 

Summary

The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir is set during the early days of The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet II in the bucolic village of Chilbury, England.  With many of the village men off to war, the ladies who remain in the village decide to ‘carry on singing’ as part of the “The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir.”  As they do, the war rages around them as Dunkirk is evacuated and the German drop bombs on their village.  The ladies suffer more than their share of loss.  However, they keep hope alive and life goes on with romances, intrigue and a bizarre and hilarious switched at birth story.

 

Quotes 

“Human nature defeats me sometimes, how greed and spite can lurk so divisively around the utmost courage and sacrifice.”

 

“I took a deep breath of the syrupy sweetness of summer, suffused with bees and birds, and I thought to myself how beautiful this world can be. How lucky we are to be here, to be part of it, for however long we have.”

 

“And I realized that this is what it’s like to be an adult, learning to pick from a lot of bad choices and do the best you can with that dreadful compromise. Learning to smile, to put your best foot forward, when the world around you seems to have collapsed in its entirety, become a place of isolation, a sepia photograph of its former illusion.”

 

 

“…we spoke about dying. [Prim] told me how she’d nearly died of malaria. She said that she didn’t mind the thought of death. That realizing you’re going to die actually makes life better as it’s only then that you decide to live the life you really want to live.”

 

Then I looked out onto the horizon myself and realized that loss is the same wherever you go: overwhelming, inexorable, deafening. How resilient human beings are that we can learn slowly to carry on when we are left all alone, left to fill the void as best we can. Or disappear into it.”

 

“If we don’t think about our death until we die, how can we decide how we want to live?”

 

My Take

During my thousand book quest, I have read a lot of books that take place during World War II (The Nightingale, The Girl You Left Behind, Life After Life, Going Solo, A God in Ruins, The End of the Affair, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, The Zookeeper’s Wife ) and for the most part, I have really enjoyed them.  The world at war, with the potential of a complete takeover by the Nazis, automatically raises the stakes in any book.  In a similar fashion to The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir gives us the perspective of the British home front when invasion by the Germans felt imminent.  Jennifer Ryan is a skilled writer, creating a world that is easy to inhabit and characters that you want to get to know better.

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167. Sweet Tooth

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Ian McEwan

Genre:  Historical Fiction, Fiction

378 pages, published November 13, 2012

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

In 1972, Cambridge student Serena Frome’s beauty, intelligence and staunch anti-Communism make her an ideal recruit for the UK’s intelligence service MI5.  Once there, Serena becomes a part of operation “Sweet Tooth,” the intelligence agency’s efforts to manipulate the cultural conversation by funding writers whose politics align with those of the government.

Serena, a compulsive reader of novels, recruits Tom Haley, a promising young writer and they begin a tempestuous love affair.   With Serena fearing that Tom will discover her role in his financing, Sweet Tooth finishes with an unexpected twist.

 

Quotes 

“Love doesn’t grow at a steady rate, but advances in surges, bolts, wild leaps, and this was one of those.”

 

“There was, in my view, an unwritten contract with the reader that the writer must honour. No single element of an imagined world or any of its characters should be allowed to dissolve on an authorial whim. The invented had to be as solid and as self-consistent as the actual. This was a contract founded on mutual trust.”

 

“By degrees, he joins that sorry legion of passive men who abandon their children in order to placate their second wives.”

 

“Arguing with a dead man in a lavatory is a claustrophobic experience.”

 

“My needs were simple.   I didn’t bother much with themes or felicitous phrases and skipped fine descriptions of weather, landscapes and interiors. I wanted characters I could believe in, and I wanted to be made curious about what was to happen to them. Generally, I preferred people to be falling in and out of love, but I didn’t mind so much if they tried their hand at something else. It was vulgar to want it, but I liked someone to say ‘Marry me’ by the end.”

 

“I was irritated by the way he conflated his own shifting needs with an impersonal destiny. I want it, therefore…it’s in the stars!”

 

“And feeling clever, I’ve always thought, is just a sigh away from being cheerful.”

 

“What I took to be the norm — taut, smooth, supple — was the transient special case of youth. To me, the old were a separate species, like sparrows or foxes.”

 

“Four or five years – nothing at all. But no one over thirty could understand this peculiarly weighted and condensed time, from late teens to early twenties, a stretch of life that needed a name, from school leaver to salaried professional, with a university and affairs and death and choices in between. I had forgotten how recent my childhood was, how long and inescapable it once seemed. How grown up and how unchanged I was.”

 

“Everyone knew as much as they needed to know to be happy.”

 

“Here were the luxury and priviledge of the well-fed man scoffing at all hopes and progress for the rest. [He] owed nothing to a world that nurtured him kindly, liberally educated him for free, sent him to no wars, brought him to manhood without scary rituals or famine or fear of vengeful gods, embraced him with a handsome pension in his twenties and placed no limits on his freedom of expression. This was an easy nihilism that never doubted that all we had made was rotten, never thought to pose alternatives, never derived hope from friendship, love, free markets, industry, technology, trade, and all the arts and sciences.”

 

My Take

Having previously read Atonement, Amsterdam, On Chesil Beach, The Children Act, Saturday and Nutshell, I am a big fan of the brilliant English writer Ian McEwan.  While not his best work, Sweet Tooth is still a very interesting book with a compelling female lead character (Serena Frome) who delivers an inside look at the Cold War mentality in Britain during the early 1970’s.  McEwan also has a lot to say about the pleasures and purposes of reading (something I can relate to) and some fascinating asides on logical math problems.

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