by Maria Roden | Sep 30, 2024 | Book review, Fiction
Wow! What a heartbreaking, powerful, at times hilarious, and very moving novel by Tess Gunty. The main character Blandine lives in a low cost housing development nicknamed The Rabbit Hutch along with various neighbors who become integral to her story. She shares her...
by Maria Roden | Sep 30, 2024 | Book review, Fiction
This is a beautiful novel about finding salvation in art. Meet 82 Year Old Honey Fasinga, feisty, glamorous and subsisting on a diet of valium and viognier who returns home to New Jersey after decades working as a patron of the arts in auction houses in New York and...
by Maria Roden | Sep 1, 2024 | Book review, Fiction
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...
by Maria Roden | Aug 1, 2024 | Book review, Fiction
This was such a unique and wonderful short read. After 60 years living in Australia, Helen Cartwright moves back to England to spend her last remaining years. She has lost her son and her husband and the lonely routine of her day causes her to wonder whether life is...
by Maria Roden | Jul 16, 2024 | Book review, Fiction
I found this book totally uplifting, charming and hilarious but with a sprinkling of trauma and unexpected violence! Marjorie Benson gives up her school teaching job to go on an expedition to the South Pacific to find the Golden Beetle of New Caledonia, an insect...
by Maria Roden | Jul 1, 2024 | Book review, Fiction
This debut novel by Yael van der Wouden is full of tension and had me intrigued from the first page. The book is set in Holland in the early 1960s and centers around a house currently occupied by a single woman called Isabel. We learn that Isabel has grown up in the...
