Biting wit in this short novel about a dysfunctional Latin American family
Tag Archives: books
Review no 79: Kiss of the Spider Woman – book by Manuel Puig (Argentina)
Entertaining, multi-layered 1970s Latin American tale, set in an Argentinian prison
Review no 74: The Pact We Made by Layla Alammar (Kuwait)
Dahlia feels trapped in her life in cosmopolitan Kuwait, with her well-meaning family who nevertheless refuse to acknowledge the trauma of her teen years
A Rare Sighting of my TBR Shelf
Normal service will resume on the blog later this week, but in the meantime I’ve spent a happy hour ‘arranging’ all my unread books, double stacked and higgeldy-piggeldy, on a single shelf. This is an attempt to persuade myself to use the time when I would otherwise be shopping for books, or going out, or […]
Review no 46: Jamaica Kincaid, Lucy (Antigua and Barbuda)
AMERICAS AND THE CARIBBEAN This was a very enjoyable, quick read. The novel (published in 1990) starts off as an engaging coming of age story about a girl from the West Indies arriving in North America as an au pair, although Lucy’s resentment and anger become increasingly evident as the book progresses. The book reads […]
Review no 30: Irmgard Keun (1905-82), The Artificial Silk Girl (Germany)
Sexually adventurous, ditzy, Weimar-era heroine Doris has quite the adventures in 1930s Berlin.
Review no 27: Han Kang, Human Acts (South Korea)
FAR EAST, SOUTH ASIA AND AUSTRALASIA Translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith When it came to choosing a female South Korean writer, there was really no choice to be made. Han Kang is a previous winner of the Man Booker International Prize, and two of her novels recently made it onto the top 5 […]
Review no 26: Tété-Michel Kpomassie, An African in Greenland (Togo)
“Unbelievable!” he exclaimed. “How can a man fall off a sled? It’s not possible, yet you, you managed to do it. I saw you rolling down like a seal’s bladder, and I couldn’t believe my eyes!”
Review no 25: Hanne Ørstavik, Love (Norway)
I loved this short, sharp shock of a novel. Think you’re a bad mother? It’s ok, you’re not as bad as Vibeke.
Review no 23: Margaret Atwood, The Testaments (Canada)
It had to be done – ticking off my Canadian female writer with my take on Margaret Atwood’s blockbusting ‘The Testaments’
