Table Two and Peace, Perfect Peace
Reviewed by Shirley Whiteside
Wilenski draws on her own working experiences to produce an environment that anyone who has worked in an office will recognize. There are the curious routines, petty jealousies, long-running feuds, and power struggles. As the bombing reaches London, these varied women find their own way to cope with life in wartime. This novel provides a prosaic picture of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, leavened by Wilenski’s eye for a telling detail and dry wit [Read more...] in Reviews
Reviewed by Zoë Fairbairns
[Schwartz] challenges traditional theories of class and the nature of productive and reproductive labour. Her source materials include memoirs from factory workers and titled ladies, as well as domestic financial records, timetables of household duties, and diaries. There is also correspondence printed in suffrage journals about ‘the servant problem’, with brisk ripostes from servants pointing out the problems they had with some employers [Read more...] in Reviews
Reviewed by Alison Burns
[Patchett] writes of family ties coming undone, of the lifelong impact of childhood experience, of the power of place – and of love – in our lives. She asks a question about maternal responsibility that remains, in the end, unresolved. Not for nothing does Patchett have a reputation for painful as well as compelling storytelling [Read more...] in Reviews
Reviewed by Elizabeth Hilliard Selka
The novel has won various awards and even the translation was nominated for a National Book Award. Murugan himself is from a family of farmers in Kongunadu and is now an established author and academic: he has written ten novels as well as short stories, poetry and non-fiction, and is a professor of Tamil. One Part Woman is written in deceptively gentle, flowing prose, but this ‘quiet’ novel by a respectable writer became the focus of violent protest by caste-based and religious Hindu groups [Read more...] in Reviews
Reviewed by Elsbeth Lindner
It all begins at that famous zebra crossing in Abbey Road, London, in 1988, when a young man named Saul Adler bends to his girlfriend Jennifer Moreau’s will and allows himself to be photographed on the crossing, dressed up like John Lennon. The event does not pass without incident. Firstly, Saul is knocked down by a car. His injuries are only glancing, allowing the couple to go back to her place and make love. But then Saul proposes to Jennifer, and not only does she reject him but she ends the relationship too [Read more...] in Reviews
Reviewed by Elsbeth Lindner
Keane’s quiet capability embraces a three-generational plot, multiple character perspectives and some complicated topics, notably mental health and addiction. Her empathy extends easily to Anne who, after reaching a shattering crisis, is incarcerated in a secure facility. Anne’s struggle to regain control of herself and a degree of normalcy in her interactions with her family are one facet of the story. Another is Kate’s response to this challenge and how it feeds into to the amelioration of another threat [Read more...] in Reviews
