![]() ![]() Susan’s search for her father begins with her mother’s possibly misremembered or misspelt surnames, a reading room ticket, and a silver cigarette case engraved with something that might be a coat of arms. Merlin is a young left-handed bookseller (one of the fighting ones), who with the right-handed booksellers (the intellectual ones), are an extended family of magical beings who police the mythic and legendary Old World when it intrudes on the modern world, in addition to running several bookshops. Crime boss Frank Thringley might be able to help her, but Susan doesn’t get time to ask Frank any questions before he is turned to dust by the prick of a silver hatpin in the hands of the outrageously attractive Merlin. ![]() In a slightly alternate London in 1983, Susan Arkshaw is looking for her father, a man she has never met. From the bestselling master of teen fantasy, Garth Nix. ![]() A girl’s quest to find her father leads her to an extended family of magical fighting booksellers who police the mythical Old World of England when it intrudes on the modern world. ![]()
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![]() The personal lives of the characters are aligned and juxtaposed to the wider political drama in Czechoslovakia. ![]() As accurately reflected in its grand title it is the philosophical musings (rather than the plot) that make up the force of the novel. The novel tells the story of a group of romantically involved intellectuals and artists in Czechoslovakia during the period of Prague Spring in 1968. The news brings me back to Kundera’s most influential work, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, to see how it can still speak to a reader today. But he has recently regained his native citizenship, and been awarded the prestigious Czech literary award – the Franz Kafka prize. ![]() Kundera spent his life and career in exile. The book will persuade you of the insignificance of your individual existence whilst also managing to feature a dog as one of the central characters. ![]() ![]() Milan Kundera’s novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984) offers the same philosophical musings but with significantly less deaths. Many turned to works that would speak to the current situation, reflected in a surge of sales about fictional pandemics, such as Albert Camus’ The Plague. With its recurring lockdowns and periods of isolation, 2020 has been a year of intense philosophical reflection. ![]() ![]() ![]() They are without skills, without family and really, without an education. The majority of the book follows these five characters after they’ve left the school, their lives intersecting as they try to make sense of a world they know next to nothing about. The novel doesn’t spend much time at the school itself, but we learn enough to see how Kenny, Lucy, Clara, Howie and Maisie suffer at the hands of the priest and the nuns, particularly Sister Mary. ![]() ![]() Five Little Indians, by Canadian lawyer and first time novelist Michelle Good, won the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Amazon First Novel prize and the book was well-reviewed.Īnd I am not going to crap all over it because there were some things I did like about the book, which follows five people who were sent to residential school as children and then were either released or escaped into 1960s Vancouver. I had the same problem with The Nickel Boys. It’s tough to review a book written by an Indigenous author about an important subject (residential schools and their traumatic legacy) and not sound like an asshole when you don’t love it. ![]() |