S.J. Watson’s Before I Go to Sleep HarperCollins, 2011 Don’t start reading S.J. Watson’s debut novel before you go to sleep, unless you don’t mind postponing that good night’s sleep you were anticipating. It is, as the blurbs suggest, a page-turner, and you will find it difficult – if not
Anne Peile’s Repeat It Today with Tears Serpent’s Tail, 2010 (Looking for a swallow rather than a full glass? ORANGE Squirt below.) Kathryn Harrison’s 1997 memoir, The Kiss, considering the author’s four-year-long consensual relationship with her father, opens, as you might have guessed, with a kiss. “Against such backdrops, my
Tishani Doshi’s The Pleasure Seekers Bloomsbury, 2010 (Looking for a swallow rather than a full glass? ORANGE Squirt below.) Tishani Doshi’s debut opens with Prem Kumar Patel, 47 years old, and his wife, Trishala, sending off their oldest son, Babo, to England, with three younger children remaining at home. The
Alina Bronsky’s Broken Glass Park (2008) Trans. from the German, Tim Mohr Europa Editions, 2010 I read the opening sentences of Broken Glass Park when I was walking home from the library. The temperature had warmed enough for me to have my mittens off, the sidewalks had melted and smoothed
Thanks for the Ride I’m accustomed to thinking of Alice Munro as the chronicler of Lives of Girls and Women, so I was surprised to come upon a male narrator in “Thanks for the Ride”. Dickie is hanging out with his cousin, George, who is three years older, in Pop’s
