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Introducing guest blogger Michèle

I’m thrilled that my great friend and avid reader Michèle, will join me as guest blogger for adult books on Bookstoker. Michèle has read everything, and by that I mean literally EVERYTHING. She has over 1,500 books listed on her Goodreads account and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Michèle lives in Singapore with her family, has spent many years in Asia and brings with her a whole different cultural and geographical perspective. Apart from that, she writes beautifully and, as you’ll see, has great taste in books! You can read more about Michèle in the About section and her first rave review of multiple prize winning book H is for Hawk.

 

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4th book in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Series to be published

The Girl in the Spider’s Web, the 4th book in Stieg Larsson’s phenomenally successful Millennium Series (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, The Girl Who Played with Fire) is coming out on the 27th of August, only this time the book is not written by Larsson who died in 2004. Larsson’s publisher, unable to resist another bonanza (The Millennium Series have sold 80 million copies!), has commissioned David Lagercrantz, a Swedish author and biographer, to write a sequel based on Larsson’s characters and universe. Smells fishy to me…

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God Help the Child

Veneer from venerable Morrison

It’s rare these days that I wish a book were longer, but that’s what I did with Nobel laureate Toni Morrison’s latest book God Help the Child (to be published on 23 April). For the wrong reasons, unfortunately. Morrison’s writing is beautiful, as always, but this novel about child abuse felt like a thin veneer of a story. One in which I constantly wanted to scratch the surface for more information.

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To Kill a Mockingbird

Still good after all these years

There’s something wonderfully innocent and warm about this 1950s classic, despite its dead serious subject matter of racism. Life is simple; the goodies are good, the baddies are bad. Fundamentally, the book is about tolerance, for the lonely, weirdo neighbour, for the sick, angry, old lady down the road and, of course, for blacks, otherwise ostracised by 1930s Alabamian white society. I read this book 20 years ago and found it a joy to re-read, although my older more cynical self did think it a bit sentimental at times.

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Dept. of Speculation

Snapshots of a marriage

Jenny Offill’s little gem of a book Dept. of Speculation was on The New York Times’ list of 10 best books of 2014, and with good reason. It’s an unusual novel, written in snapshots, in much the same fragmented way our memory works. It’s the sum of those memories that create the narrative of our past or, in this case, the story of a relationship. In Dept. of Speculation, Offill tells an age-old tale in a refreshingly new way and creates something truly different.

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The Buried Giant

An ogre too far?

It’s been a decade since Kazuo Ishiguro’s sinister, sci-fi-esque Never Let Me Go, a novel I really liked. In The Buried Giant Ishiguro yet again embarks on a genre bending project. This time it’s fantasy. We’re in 6th century post-Roman Britain and a mist has descended on the landscape and peoples’ minds, obscuring memories of recent wars. Axl and Beatrice, an elderly couple go on a journey to find their son and stumbles over dragons, ogres, knights and monks as well as recollections of a violent past. Despite the beautiful, atmospheric writing and profound message, I found The Buried Giant hard work. Will this only be the case for fantasy-sceptics like me?

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Neverhome

An explosion of a novel

In Laird Hunt’s gripping novel Neverhome we meet Constance, aka Ash Thompson, who joins the American civil war disguised as a man. ‘I was strong and he was not, so it was me went to war to defend the Republic’, Ash says matter-of-factly referring to her mild mannered husband Bartholomew. And no, it’s not my spelling mistake in this opening sentence, it’s Ash’s. Ash is a simple farmwoman who dreams of finding the first lilac in spring. She’s also happens to be a take-no-prisoners sharp shooter. Ash joins the war out of a sense of duty, at least that’s what she tells us. Soon we see the contours of a troubled past in this very human portrayal of a tormented woman in a man’s world.

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