VIEW POST
Journey
Elizabeth Strout has contributed significantly to my favourites bookshelf with her two unforgettable characters: Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton. Both women were crafted from the discerning and expressive observational talent of Elizabeth Strout. Lucy Barton spent her early life in abject poverty, an extreme situation that shaped her personality…
VIEW POST
Illuminate
Claire Keegan has crafted an outstanding novella that is heartbreakingly authentic, compelling, and reassuring in how a regular person rejected and ultimately helped curb the authority of the Catholic Church in Ireland.
Claire Keegan’s writing is exquisite (I have found a book fitting of those words), and Small Things Like These gently…
VIEW POST
Inflection
The Dark Frontier is an absorbing and mysterious drama that meticulously crafts a menacing tale that explores a personality transformation of the main protagonist along with two sequences of events. As a London-based journalist, Frank Goss takes an assignment in Switzerland to cover the 1971 Swiss referendum of women’s right…
VIEW POST
This novel based on the story of an impoverished rural family kept me reading. The writer’s skill at character development is masterful. The stories of each member of this family reveal themselves gradually and we discover strength in Jeanie, reportedly the least capable, great weakness in Justin, her twin,…
VIEW POST
Diversity
Elizabeth Macneal has written a superb historical fiction novel that is full of drama and adventure. Set against the Victorian obsession with oddities, freaks, and wonders, many captivating story threads bring us mystery, intrigue, and the enthralling draw of circus life and performance. Nell is a young woman living…
VIEW POST
Feu sacré
Fields of Grace is an absorbing novel, epic in its ability to build a compelling story around a leading character, and transport her life through years of adventure, drama and relationships, and arrive at a point on the final day of her life with profound secrets to reveal. Wendy…
VIEW POST
Sometimes Netgalley sends me emails to tempt me to read or listen to something. I have to thank them for this recommendation. I am so happy that I got a chance to pick up “Send Judah First” by Brian C. Johnson. It is one of these stories that everyone…
VIEW POST
Faithful
L.L. Tremblay writes her novel in the first person, bringing an authentic sensitivity to a haunting story of love and loss. Grappling with personal, family, friend, partner and mystical relationships, several tumultuous life-defining events unfold in this heartfelt drama. Tremblay crafts an absorbing story that reaches into our desire…
VIEW POST
This is the heartbreaking story of Hugh ‘Shuggie’ Bain and his mother Agnes. He’s lonely, on the receiving end of much unpleasantness around his sexuality and has to cope with Agnes’ drinking. Set in the 1980’s of Thatcher’s Britain it shows a time of hardship, of the industrial decline…
VIEW POST
Accession
Small Island is a keenly examined story exploring the prejudices that existed, and still do, around racial inequality in post-WWII Britain. The novel flips back and forward from 1948 to a time before the war when two Jamaicans, Gilbert and Hortense dream of immigrating to Britain. Hortense has an image…
Founder of The Reading Desk, supporting readers, authors, publishers and book industry. Top Reviewer on Amazon, Goodreads, and NetGalley peter@thereadingdesk.com
