Skellig is about a boy called Michael, who finds an angel in his crappy old broken-down garage. Or, to be more precise, in his crappy old broken-down garage, he finds a filthy, exhausted, starving, unfriendly man called Skellig with growths on his back that Michael suspects are wings (which proves to be the case). Michael’s baby sister is very sick, and because he is very worried about her, and can’t help her, he focuses his energies on taking care of Skellig instead. Mina, the strange, clever girl next door, helps him and teaches him about bones and William Blake (two…
6 CommentsAuthor: Jenny Hamilton
The Brooklyn Follies is all about a middle-aged man called Nathan Glass, divorced, a cancer survivor, estranged from his daughter, who goes to Brooklyn to die. While there, he reunites with his nephew Tom, who is working in a bookshop for an earnest, checkered-past-y, rather gullible man called Harry. The events of the story come together to give Nathan a life again. Hm. I cannot decide what my final verdict on the book is. In parts, I really really liked it. It was extremely well-written, as I noticed from the first. I would say this was its most notable characteristic,…
Leave a CommentI simply cannot get on with Patricia McKillip. I don’t know what it is about her books that displease me. The writing is lovely, her characters are likeable, the plots are interesting – and still, every single time I pick up one of her books, I end up stewing in displeasure and finally asking myself, Jenny, why are you torturing yourself like this? Just put the damn book down and read something else. Winter Rose is a retelling of Tam Lin. I love that story! As previously mentioned, I am reading a bunch of retellings of that story. And there…
10 CommentsConfession: Sometimes when I read book reviews on other people’s blogs, I am paying so much attention to one thing, that I immediately forget a lot of what the review says. For instance, Colleen mentioned that Sima’s Undergarments for Women is not a book about friendship, as she’d expected, but rather a story about love and loss and the consequences of decisions. I did not pay any attention to this “not about friendship” business, because I was too busy thinking, Ilana Stanger-Ross, that is a simply fantastic name. Sima’s Undergarments for Women is about a woman called Sima who owns…
3 CommentsAh, books about books. I read this because I can’t get ahold of Nick Hornby’s much-touted books about books. Anne Fadiman writes about all kinds of aspects of loving books: marrying libraries, loving your books, plagiarism – all kinds of things. I liked some of these essays a lot – the one about marrying libraries made me wince because I could picture myself agonizing over how to organize and sort out my books with someone else’s. I was interested to read an essay from the perspective of a woman who loves books and doesn’t mind destroying them. (I wrote, destroying…
9 CommentsI do not appreciate casual slaps at the South for being racist. I do not mind delineations of particular racist things the South has done and continues to do (that’s fair, although I don’t know why the North always gets such a pass), but I just can’t stand this unsupported assumption that the South is full of people ten times more racist than the rest of the country. So I didn’t like it in this book when the Mysterious (read: deeply aggravating and nobody in her right mind would ever bother with him) Boy Next Door, Dominic, says a few…
11 CommentsOh, dear, the plight of women throughout history has been really dreadful. The Case of Madeleine Smith is a graphic novel (graphic history, I guess) about real-life Victorian lady Madeleine Smith, who may or may not have murdered her lover Emile L’Anglier (though she probably did murder him, the book strongly implies). It’s a straightforward, fairly impersonal depiction of the story – could just as well be the Classic Comics version! The book deliberately (I assume) sets the reader at one remove from the players in the story, so it’s more of a history than a story. I would have…
2 CommentsI read somewhere (who knows?) that War for the Oaks is a retelling of Tam Lin. I’m on a mad craze to read all the retellings of Tam Lin that I can find, which is brilliant because Fire and Hemlock is waiting for me at the end. Also, I am interested in reading a whole bunch of retellings of one story, because I am thinking of doing an adaptation of “The Little Mermaid”, and I am curious to see how people do it. War for the Oaks isn’t a retelling of Tam Lin, but it’s fun and I enjoyed it.…
4 CommentsI read about this over at Imani’s blog – I miss Imani! Where did she go?? – and today curled up in my comfy old papasan chair to read it. The Shooting Party is set shortly before the start of World War I, with a large group of British aristocrats and their spouses getting all together to shoot at Lord Randolph Nettleby’s estate. With World War I looming on the horizon, the reader is all too aware that they are gathering together to participate in a way of life that is passing and will soon be dying away entirely. At…
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