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  Published: 1996, Jonathan Cape Genre: Fiction Themes: northern ireland, the troubles, family My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤❤ While the library is closed I am re-reading some of the books on my own shelves and I'm glad the lockdown bought me back to this gem of a book. Reading in the Dark by Seamus Deane is such an accomplished piece of writing that it could act as a real deterrent to lesser mortals to ever try to commit a story to paper.  It tells the tale of a family in Northern Ireland who suffer over three generations because of the grandfather's political associations and the true story of a shadowy incident in the past is gradually revealed by his grandson. As I was about to write the paragraph above, I realised I couldn't think of the boy's name, and I turned back to the book to flip through the pages to find it.  It was only then I discovered that the boy is never named but I didn't notice that at any point when I was reading the book. Each chapter is only a fe...

  Published: 2019, Galley Beggar Press Genre: Fiction Themes: stream of consciousness, family My rating (out of 5): ❤ I very rarely give up on a book but I am just about to give up on this one. Ducks, Newburyport is written by Lucy Ellmann and is physically a breeze block of a book.  I borrowed it from the library, purely because of it's size, because I needed a stock of fiction for the impending lockdown, and I didn't want to run out of reading material. The front cover tells me that the book was longlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize, and that gets a tick from me whenever I chose a library book.  There are also very favourable reviews from The Irish Times, The Observer and the Guardian so more ticks for those.  On top of that, almost anyone who had a Fiction Pick list for 2019  included Ducks, Newburyport so after noting all that, what's not to like? Well.... What they don't tell you on the cover is that the book is written in the 'stream of consciousness' ...

  Published: 1996, Simon and Schuster Genre: Fiction Themes: America, marriage, fidelity, crime My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤ Douglas Kennedy is the writer who gave us The Pursuit of Happiness, and I had high hopes for this novel, but I don't think it works as well. It is the story of a marriage told from the perspective of Hannah Buchan, who we meet as a girl in college, and the story runs up to the present day when she has reached her sixties and has both children and grandchildren.  Hannah grew up in the shadow of her father who made a name for himself as the first professor at the University of Vermont to speak out against the war in Vietnam.  Her friends thought this was cool, but Hannah found his reputation put pressure on her to have her own radical streak, but instead she becomes as conformist as possible. Her mother is a difficult woman, who is blunt to the point of rudeness, and most of the time the family works around her mood swings as carefully as they can, but f...

  Published: September 2015, transworld publishers Genre: fiction/self help Themes: psychology, self improvement My rating (out of 5):  ❤❤ The full title of this book is: 'Your second life begins when you realize you only have one.' On the back of the book it says (among other things): The feel-good global sensation that will help you transform your life A charming, feel-good and universal story of one woman's journey from boredom and dissatisfaction to self confidence and contentment...' 'you'll love this' I selected this book as something uplifting to read during the lockdown but I really didn't enjoy it very much.  Maybe I shouldn't have read it on the back of The Bone People as it was only ever going to come off badly against that. This book has been the number one best seller in France, and claims to have made over 2 million readers happier, but I can't claim to have undergone any radical change in mood since getting to the last page.  It is...

Published: 1983, spiral press Genre: Fiction Themes: Maori culture, domestic violence, alcoholism, spiritualism, family My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤   The Bone People by Keri Hulme is a unique book that many critics hate, but countless people buy and read over and over again.  It took twelve years of work to put together, as the original short story evolved into quite a thick book, and three publishers rejected it before the small New Zealand publisher, Spiral, took it on. Keri Hulme knew that her writing style did not conform to the norm, but she was determined not to allow her work to be cut about by an editor, because she had created something that was personal to her.  Earlier today I read a Guardian review of the book that described the writing as 'terrible' and the reviewer did not care for the 'mystic bo****ks' that come into the later chapters.  I hope the review did not deter too many potential readers. After all the difficulty in getting the book published, i...