From the front I am brown; turn me over and I'm pasty white again. I remember a peanuts cartoon where Linus only cleans the front of his shoes because 'I only care what people think of me before they know me.' Or something like that.
So I'm getting through a few books.
by Emma Stroud
It was okay. Perfectly readable and I did get to care about most of the characters by the end. It's about three friends who were in a band in college and who now live almost next door to each other, the difference being they now have growing-up children of their own. 3*
by Ayisha Malik
I realised after I started that this is a sequel - but can be read without having read the first book. It's in diary form and I was little annoyed by the differing fonts used to indicate email correspondence etc because it looked a bit bitty but if you get past that then it's good. It's about a Muslim woman who marries an Irish convert much to the disappointment of both their families. It's billed as a romcom so you need to like that sort of thing but what I loved about - and why I gave it 4* - is the fact that it normalises prayer and praying. You just don't get that in books where the characters are Christian. Unless it's a Christian novel but they're a bit cringey. I shouldn't say that. I don't read them so I'm just guessing. Actually the best 'Christian' novel I've ever read is ... I'll tell you later. 4*
by Anne Tyler
A retelling of The Taming of the Shrew, featuring a scientist who tries to persuade his daughter to marry his assistant so he can get a Green card and remain in America. It's quite a short book but I did love this. 4*
2 comments:
I was a big Anne Tyler fan at one time and read all her books. That was 30 years ago and I haven't read one since. But this one sounds intriguing! I looked it up on Amazon and the whole "Hogarth Shakespeare" series of which it is a part sounds fascinating, actually -- various novelists "retelling" Shakespearean tales in modern settings. I'm going to add this Anne Tyler book to my "to read" list because "The Taming of the Shrew" is SUCH a problematic play from a feminist point of view -- I'm always interested in modern re-stagings of it that try to get around that central difficulty. I'm intrigued by how Anne Tyler would deal with it.
Anne Tyler is always good so I must find this.
.I'm reading Fourth of July Creek by Smith Henderson and it reminds me a lot of some of the bleaker side of the work I did. Fascinating in a rather exhausting way!
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