dittybox

  A book about an American businessman living his comfortable modern life in a flat in Tokyo.  He appears to have everything a man could want but two things bother him.  Firstly, he is divorced from his American wife, and because of the vast continental distance between them, he doesn't see as much of his teenage daughter as he would like.  Secondly, he previously had a brief relationship with an elegant but mysterious Japanese woman, who he lost contact with, and now he is prepared to go to great lengths to find her again. After much negotiation, his wife agrees to allow their daughter to stay with him in Tokyo for an extended visit during which she will attend school in the city and broaden her experience.  Unbeknown to all of them, a troubled young man with a background of belonging to a disturbing sect has taken a deep interest in the daughter and begins tracking her life both online and in the street. With the father distracted by his quest to find the Japa...

  Finding a new book by Elizabeth Strout is like receiving an invitation to some kind of reunion, because once you open the pages, old friends appear.  There's Lucy Barton and Olive Kitteridge and good old Bob Burgess and before you know it you feel as though you'd never been away. Olive has reached the grand old age of ninety one in this novel, and although she doesn't have the lead in this story, she still manages to make herself the most  important character just by letting other people come and tell her things.  Olive has heard that the novelist Lucy Barton has moved nearby, and knowing that she is a writer, Olive invites her to visit her in her retirement home to hear a story that may be of interest.  Lucy is happy to come along and Olive is pleased to find that she seems genuinely interested in her story. Not many people know how to properly listen to someone's story, but those that do ask questions to show they have absorbed the information and are keen t...

  Elizabeth O'Connor is clearly a clever woman with a great talent for putting words together and I found myself reading this book as though I was watching the people through a lens.  It's more of a social observation than a gripping tale but it's interesting to see how island people lived around the start of the second world war and the characters are very believable. The book is told from the perspective of an eighteen year old girl called Manod and it begins at a time when a dying whale washes up on the beach.  The whale is too big for anyone to move so the islanders are unable to save it and nature is left to deal with the problem.  The time of the whale fall coincides with the arrival of two university people who come to observe the old island customs before they are lost and Manod spends a lot of time with them translating Welsh into English. Old traditions were still observed on the island as most inhabitants had very little interaction with the mainland, so u...

  This book fits nicely into the 'cosy crime' genre and makes a good read for the long winter evenings.  It's a neat combination of crime and history with a touch of spooky that will keep you warm through the long winter evenings. Set in the years immediately following the First World War, it focuses on the wealthy Stilwell family living in Darkacre Hall, who have wrapped themselves up in so many lies and cover-ups that they can't even trust each other when their stories start to unravel. In the summer of 1914 a boy disappeared from the nearby village, but as the war commenced all investigations came to a halt, and it isn't until six years after the end of hostilities that a Detective Sergeant comes knocking at their door asking for help with enquiries. The family know more than they are willing to admit, and they hope they have been vague enough to keep the police away, but a twist of fate keeps the detective trapped in their old house for a few days and secrets be...

  Last week I read A Town Called Solace by Mary Lawson and one of my comments was that it 'wasn't a stand-out read for me', and difficult to see how it had made the Booker Longlist.  This week I feel more justified in saying that because Held by Anne Michaels has such a high quality of writing and thought-provoking content that from the first page I felt as though I was reading something special. When I am reading, I particularly like it when an author gives me something to read that causes me to stop for a moment and consider what is being said.  The opening line of this book is: 'We know life is finite.  Why should we believe that death lasts forever?' The whole book is divided up into small segments as though we are turning the pages of a photograph album that gradually reveals who the people are from crumbs of information left for us to follow.  The segments are within sections that move across generations and the thread that binds them is the idea that we...

  This book has attracted a lot of attention, and appeared on the Booker Longlist for 2021, but I have to say that it was not that much of a stand-out read for me.  It's an easy to read with a gentle build to the plot but just not a real page turner that I couldn't wait to get back to.  Maybe it suffered for being the book I read straight after Boy Swallows Universe . It centres around a man called Liam who has unexpectedly been left a small property by a woman who his family lived next door to when he was a very small child.  He barely has any memory of her so it is all a bit strange, but he is at a crossroads in his life having recently split from his wife, so he heads north through the forests of Canada to live there for a while. When he arrives at the house he finds it fully furnished with all the old lady's possessions exactly as she had left them when she went into hospital, but that doesn't bother him as he won't be staying long.  People notice that the h...

  Before reading this book I wouldn't have thought it was possible for a story to be both shockingly dark and then whimsical within a few paragraphs.  This novel is one of a kind and despite all the bad stuff going on all around, it is really a story about love. Love allows for difference, and the lead character, twelve year old Eli, accepts people for how they are in the present moment and looks for the good in their heart and soul.  Sometimes there is no good to be found, and on those occasions an enemy is made, but some people with serious criminal records can have good in their hearts if you care to look for it.  Eli's brother August has been mute since they were both involved in a serious accident which nearly killed both of them. They were travelling in the car with their father when the vehicle left the road and went over the edge a dam, plunging them into the water.  The boys were hauled out lifeless, but by some miracle they were both revived and in tha...