This was a real outlier for me. I seldom read bestsellers, and I almost never read mysteries, but for some reason The Maid intrigued me and I picked it up at the library.
Though novels often disappoint me (when it comes to books, I’m very picky!) this one certainly did not. I read it, maybe not in a single sitting, but in the course of a single day.
It was very well written and cleverly plotted, but what really made it shine was the protagonist, Molly. Because she’s socially awkward, she misreads people’s actions and what they say, which makes her a different sort of unreliable narrator—a delightful and memorable one.
*THE NO.1 NEW YORK TIMES & SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER *WINNER OF THE NED KELLY AWARD FOR BEST INTERNATIONAL CRIME FICTION *A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK AT BEDTIME PICK
'An escapist pleasure' SUNDAY TIMES 'Delightful' GUARDIAN 'An instantly gripping and delightful whodunnit' STYLIST 'Smart, riveting, and deliciously refreshing ' LISA JEWELL
Fearnoch is about as different from The Maid as it is possible to be—except that, again, it didn’t seem to be my sort of book at first glance or even second.
I tend to shy away from books in which the dialogue has no quotation marks and those with scads of central characters, each of whom offers their particular point of view, sometimes a mere paragraph at a time. But McEwan’s prose was so compelling that I soldiered on, and was so glad I did.
The characters are almost all seriously flawed, yet you end up empathizing with them. And the book’s portrait of life in a small town on the skids rings sadly true. This one isn’t a bestseller—it’s published by Breakwater, a smallish Newfoundland press—but it deserves to be.
***2023 IPPY AWARDS: CANADA EAST FICTION – BRONZE MEDAL***
***2022 FOREWORD INDIES BOOK AWARD – FINALIST***
Steinbeck meets Miriam Toews in this insightful and illuminating debut about the decline of rural Canada and the meaning of community.
Welcome to Fearnoch, an undistinguished Ottawa Valley farming hamlet in its twilight. The deterioration of the once fruitful way of life in this small town is explored through the lives and trajectories of its inhabitants. The narration winds into and over the characters to sow differing viewpoints on the death of the family farm, incarcerated youths, falling in love at the town dump,…
This one was recommended to me by a friend (who is also one of our local library’s staff) whose opinion I trust.
But I didn’t get around to picking it up (not an easy task, since it runs to over 700 pages) until I went to the laundromat and discovered Fayne lurking on the shelves of giveaway books (okay, it’s too hefty to actually lurk). We ignore such signs at our peril.
It proved, for a change, to be exactly the sort of book I tend to like: one that draws you inexorably into another world—in this case, Victorian England/Scotland—one that reeks of strangeness and mystery (not the Agatha Christie sort) The characters—particularly Charlotte, the protagonist, who is brilliant but even more socially awkward than Prose’s Molly—are a bit strange as well, but likable. At least for the first third or so of the novel.
But the author frequently drops hints that they may conceal mysteries of their own. And they certainly do—mysteries that are nearly impossible to foresee.
Fayne, a vast moated castle, lies to the misty southern border of Scotland, ruled by the Lord Henry Bell, Seventeenth Baron of the DC de Fayne, Peer of Her Majesty's Realm of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
The mysterious Lord Bell keeps to his rooms by day, appearing briefly at night to dote over his beloved and peculiarly gifted child. But even with all her gifts - intelligence, wit and strength of character - can Charlotte overcome the violently strict boundaries of contemporary society and establish her own place in the world?
"A satisfying thriller with enough history and mysteries to keep readers enthralled until the end." -Kirkus Reviews
As the conflict in Vietnam heats up, Simon Hannay is pursuing his Masters in Comparative Literature at a Midwest university, teaching karate on the side and doing his best to avoid the draft. He's not overly excited about his thesis... until he stumbles upon an encrypted Renaissance journal that's been hidden for decades in the rare book room.
Simon, who's been fascinated by codes and ciphers since he was a kid, convinces his advisor to let him use the mysterious codex as his thesis topic. But first he has to decipher it—and, as he soon learns, that's going to be a formidable task. To add to his problems, an unidentified rival he calls the Mystery Man is desperate to get his hands on the codex—so desperate that he ransacks Simon's apartment and even drugs and interrogates him and his advisor.
With the help of Gabriela, a Brazilian classmate, Simon finally hits upon the key to the cipher. Together they struggle to unravel and translate the text, which was penned by a 16th-century Portuguese fortune-hunter. In the process, they learn the secrets the codex contains, and why the Mystery Man is so determined to steal it.
