Tag Archives: Orange Prize Shortlist

The Very Thought Of You – Rosie Alison

by

This book absolutely flowed like poetry from start to finish!

Anna and her family live in London just before the start of WWII.  During this time when her father enlists in the army, her mother does what many mothers do at the time who are worried about their children being injured or killed when the fighting does get quite bad, she sends them on a train to secure their lives aren’t lost in the war, once it hits London.

Unbeknownst to her, Anna isn’t sent to a coastal place like she had envisioned.  She is sent to Ashton Place which is in the countryside.  Travelling by train and then by bus with only her meager belongings; she forgot her treasured teddy bear at home.

The owners of the countryside mansion are the Ashton’s.  They have opened their home to the countless children who would be in dangers way, or overcrowded somewhere else.  Since the Ashton’s are childless, they thought inviting the children would liven up their home and their lives.  For a time it does, but it fades as their love for one another has in one way or another.

As the years pass, secrets from both Anna’s and the Ashton’s side emerge.  The Ashton’s are unhappy, and have been for a time, waiting or wanting to open up to one another, lacking initiative has irrevocably blocked it – afraid of being seen as silly or selfish.  Anna’s mother although satisfied with her married life, is missing the intimacy of another’s presence.

Both sides have affairs, nearing the end of the affairs, disastrous results.

What is love?  Do you know what love really is ?  Have you ever literally ached for one person to the point that they consume their thoughts from the moment you wake until the moment you fall asleep?

Would we risk hurting of feeling abandoned by one to be truly happy?

Have we realized that our one true love has slipped through your fingers?

This novel flows like poetry, much like the poetry that is inside the novel, its ebbing and flowing, until you are at the end, wanting more, when there is none.

This book was shortlisted for the Orange Prize.

Random House – Anchor

** The E-book is available now from Random House.  I was able to secure a ebook from the British Publisher before the Canadian Publisher was publishing the novel.  The Trade Paperback of the novel will be available on July 27, 2010 here in Canada.  The book cover is depicting the European Cover.

The Lacuna – Barbara Kingslover

by

From the Publishers Website:

Born in the United States, reared in a series of provisional households in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd is mostly a liability to his social-climbing flapper mother, Salomé. From a coastal island jungle to the unpaved neighborhoods of 1930s Mexico City, through a disastrous stint at a military school in Virginia and back again, his fortunes never steady as Salomé finds her rich men-friends always on the losing side of the Mexican Revolution. Sometimes she gives her son cigarettes instead of supper.

He aims for invisibility, observing his world and recording everything with a peculiar selfless irony in his notebooks. Life is whatever he learns from servants putting him to work in the kitchen, errands he runs in the streets, and one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. Making himself useful in the household of Rivera, his wife Frida Kahlo and exiled Bolshevik leader Lev Trotsky, young Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution, and the howling gossip and reportage that dictate public opinion.

A violent upheaval sends him north to a nation newly caught up in the internationalist good will of World War II. In the mountain city of Asheville, North Carolina, he remakes himself in America’s hopeful image. Under the watch of his peerless stenographer, Violet Brown, he finds an extraordinary use for his talents of observation. But political winds continue to throw him between north and south, in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach—the lacuna—between truth and public presumption.

This is a gripping story of identity, connection with our past, and the power of words to create or devastate, unfolding at a moment when the entire world seemed bent on reinventing itself at any cost.

Well, I didn’t finish this book.  As you can probably tell from the publishers description.  It was too slow going for me, it bored me to no end.  I had read this for the Orange Prize shortlist of books.  It didn’t grab my attention like I thought it would.  Disappointed, not really.  She is a fantastic writer, this topic just wasn’t as fascinating for me. I was surprised that it did win the Orange Prize for fiction.

Out of all of the book that I have read to date with 2 of them unread, and waiting for me to receive them, this one was by far the one that I would have picked.  What do you think?

HarperCollins

Browse Inside

Black Water Rising – Attica Locke

by

I started this book shortly after I finished Wolf Hall as part of an Orange Prize Shortlist reading challenge.  Since Wolf Hall took me almost forever, I waited to see how long this book would take me to read..less than 24 hours ! Wow!

Jay and his pregnant wife are on a semi romantic cruise ( or at least that is what Jay was aiming for) along the river in Houston, Texas., when all of a sudden they hear shots and a woman screaming, a splash in the water that looks like thick oil.  Jay gets the owner of the boat to go closer to where they heard the sounds, where Jay suddenly jumps into the water to find a small skinny woman wearing designer clothes, wet, scared, and not saying a word.

They drop her off at the police station.  But, Jay begins to think since he is a personal lawyer (not a rich one) what was it that made that woman jump into the water, was anyone else hurt, but Jay’s wife who is heavily pregnant tells him to forget about it and move on with their lives.  But something keeps nagging at him, until he starts unravelling the whole truth about it all.

But, then, his own past comes up as well – being a demonstrator, being charged for a crime during one of the most tumultuous times in American History – getting racial equality.

This book had me glued to it from the beginning to the end, and even then I wanted to know more about Jay, his life, what would happen next.  I was so engrossed in this book, I brought it with me to the store, reading as I walked it was that good.  The narrative combined many important and life changing events worldwide which was interesting.

HarperCollins


Browse Inside this book
Get this for your site

Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel

by

Isn’t this the neatest cover !

Wolf Hall was a very dense read for me.  At about halfway, I wanted to chuck it and give up, but, I soldiered on and finished it.  I was happy that I did.

It is the 1520′s in England.  Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage to Katherine and to marry Anne Boylean.

Henry VIII fires Cardinal Wollsey, cuts his ties with Italy and the Pope.  The people of England haven’t this angry, ever.

As Wolsey leaves to regain some of his footing in the eyes of the church, Henry comes across one of Wolsey’s good friends and close confidants – Thomas Cromwell.  A man who has had his own trials and tribulations – growing up with a quite abusive father, who ran away to join an army and fight.  Thomas came back as a businessman, a lawyer, to become the King’s learned advisor – not only to help himself to the King as well maneuver the gossip and ridicule of what he wants to do, no matter the consequence.

From what I have read and heard about Cromwell, he was portrayed as a very angry person.  Mantel takes this and turns him into someone who has been abused, lost his entire family to illness among insurmountable odds to one that has the ear of the King, but many in court without the drama of the back dealings and manipulations that go on.

As I mentioned before, this is a dense. but, intricate read from start to finish.  Cromwell, who turns the country around ready to war to epic changes in history.

Hilary won the Man Booker Prize, and is shortlisted for the Orange Prize for fiction.

HarperCollins


Browse Inside this book
Get this for your site