Book Reviews

I loved this unique novel about a Greek film composer remembering the impact on her life of meeting and working with film director Billy Wilder during the filming of Fedora, set on the island of Corfu. There is her own coming of age story, a touching friendship between two generations, and the story of the end of the golden era of Hollywood. There are lots of references to Wilder both his early days and later life, together with his relationship with his writing partner Iz Diamond. Beautifully written.

By the same author: You might like What a Carve Up!, The Rotters Club, Bournville and Middle England.

William Boyd is a brilliant storyteller. His novels are always entertaining and surprising and so satisfying! My first introduction to him was through his book Any Human Heart. His latest The Romantic tells the story of Cashel Greville Ross, born in 1799 who travels the world experiencing an incredible array of tragedies and good fortune. He is a soldier, farmer, a prisoner, a writer, a father and lover. We find him in Ireland, France, Zanzibar, Massachusetts and Italy. So cleverly put together – hard to put down!

By the same author: Too many to list but I loved Any Human Heart, Restless, Waiting For Sunrise, Ordinary Thunderstorms, Love is Blind and Sweet Caress.

It is almost 15 years since Stanford Professor of Medicine Abraham Verghese’s Cutting for Stone hit the NYT bestseller list and it has been well worth the wait!! 

This epic multigeneration saga set in Kerala from the 1900s to 1977 is full of the sights, smells, sounds, history and culture, of the region with the story centering around Big Ammachi, the matriarch of a family, whom we first meet as a 12 year old bride to be. Without giving anything away, Big Ammachi’s family is afflicted with a peculiar condition relating to water. There were shocks, surprises and lots of medical references and while the book is long (over 700 pages) the beautiful writing just takes you from page to page and generation to generation effortlessly. It kept me intrigued right to the last page. Loved it!

Get in line to check out this book here, and be sure to look into these similar books available from MCFL:

• Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
• My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story by Abraham Verghese

There is nothing more satisfying and uplifting than reading a book that is not just beautifully written, full of unforgettable and loveable characters, and tells a captivating story, but one that also encompasses so much about art, life, love and family. You will be transported back in time to the East End of London and the Tuscan countryside after the Second World War and follow the life of Ulysses Temper for four wonderful decades. A truly fabulous novel!

Want to read this book? You can borrow the ebook from MCFL here!

Heritage is a fabulous family saga, brimming with poetry and passion, that skillfully weaves together the private lives of individuals and major historical events in South America and Europe.

The house on Calle Santo Domingo in Santiago de Chile, with its lush lemon trees, has sheltered three generations of the Lonsonier family. Having arrived from the harsh hills of France’s Jura region with a single grape vine in one pocket and a handful of change in the other, the patriarch put down roots there in the late nineteenth century. His son, Lazare, back from World War I’s hellish trenches, would live there with his wife and build in their garden the most beautiful aviary in the Andes. That’s where their daughter Margot, a pioneering aviator, would first dream of flying, and where she would raise her son, the revolutionary Ilario Da. Like Lazare before them, they will bravely face the conflicts of their day, fighting against dictatorship on both sides of the Atlantic. In this captivating and surprisingly short novel, Miguel Bonnefoy paints the portrait of an endearing, uprooted family whose terrible dilemmas, caused by the blows of history, reveal their deep humanity.

In the vein of the classic 84, Charing Cross Road, this witty and tender novel follows two women in 1960s America as they discover that food really does connect us all, and that friendship and laughter are the best medicine.

When twenty-seven-year-old Joan Bergstrom sends a fan letter–as well as a gift of saffron–to fifty-nine-year-old Imogen Fortier, a life-changing friendship begins. Joan lives in Los Angeles and is just starting out as a writer for the newspaper food pages. Imogen lives on Camano Island outside Seattle, writing a monthly column for a Pacific Northwest magazine, and while she can hunt elk and dig for clams, she’s never tasted fresh garlic–exotic fare in the Northwest of the sixties. As the two women commune through their letters, they build a closeness that sustains them through the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of President Kennedy, and the unexpected in their own lives.

This charming novel provides a brief respite from our chaotic and troubling world, a reminder that food and friendship are the antidote to most any heartache and that human connection will always be worth creating.

This short beautifully written novel stays with you long after you have finished. One to pick up and re-read… and pass on. It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man, faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church. “Powerful and affecting and very timely.”-Hilary Mantel

This Pulitzer Prize-winning follow up to The Underground Railroad is based on the real story of the Dozier reform school that operated for 111 years and damaged the lives of thousands of children in Jim Crow-era Florida. The novel dramatizes a shocking piece of recent American history (the school was still operating until 2011) through the story of Ellwood Curtis, unjustly sentenced to the Nickel Academy in 1960 where systematic abuse was the norm. The book would never have been written if Whitehead had not come across the story of the real Dozier school in 2014 when the State of Florida was exhuming the official graveyard prior to selling the property and many unmarked graves were uncovered. This is a powerful and beautifully written novel.

When she was a young woman, Roseanne McNulty was one of the most beautiful and beguiling girls in County Sligo, Ireland. Now, she is a patient at Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital, and nearing her hundredth year. As the story of Roseanne’s life unfolds, so does the life of her caregiver, Dr Grene, who has been asked to evaluate the patients to decide if they can return to society when the hospital closes down. But as Dr Grene researches her case, de discovers a document that tells a very different version of Roseanne’s life from what she can recall. Sebastian Barry writes so beautifully, and braids together two stories in a delightfully surprising way, whilst also depicting the horrors and hypocrisies of rural Ireland, the cruelties of civil war and the pernicious influence of the priesthood.