Laxness, the Nobel Prize-winning
author from Iceland who died in l998, is one of the great novelists of the
twentieth century, but somehow I’ve missed him until just this year.
Independent People is his classic—a book about an Icelandic sheep farmer that
has a depth of understanding and compassion that makes Hemingway seem
shallow.
This book is for readers who demand the most from a novel.
My hobby is fly fishing, and while
I’ve read hundreds of books on the subject, few have been as beautifully
written, with as much insight, as Illuminated by Water by a young and very
talented writer named Malachy Tallack.
Many have tried to explain what makes
fly fishing so compelling; Tallack comes closest to delivering the answer.
Growing up in Shetland with its myriad lochs and burns, Malachy Tallack and his brother would roam the island in search of trout, and in so doing discovered a sense of freedom, of wonder - and an abiding passion.
But why is it that fishing - or the mere contemplation of catching a fish - can be so thrilling and so captivating?
Why is it that time spent beside water can be imprinted so sharply in memory?
Why is it that what seems a simple act - of casting a line, waiting and…
Ardizzone is one of those American
novelists who deserves more recognition.
In Bruno’s Shadow, set in Rome, is
writing of the highest order from a novelist who tackles big themes and big
personalities and fills each page with wisdom and insight of the highest
order.
Ardizzone artfully weaves together the stories of seven strangers whose fates--and faiths--become intertwined as they make a pilgrimage to the fountains, the churches, and the miracles of Rome.
A troubled young Croatian woman named Dubravka travels to the site of apparitions of the Virgin Mary and witnesses a miracle. Twenty years later, after working as a kitchen sister in a cloistered convent, she goes to Rome where she finds that for a few months prior to the pope's death her habit of prayer triggers miracles of sorts in others. The chapters describing their overlapping experiences in Rome alternate with the chapters presenting the story of Dubravka's life
It is a novel of Charles Marden, an apple grower, and judge, who sets off from his
Vancouver Island home on an impulsive journey to Belgium, where his son, an
Allied soldier, has just died in battle at the very end of the First World War.
Marden descends into the killing fields of the trenches as his search for the
memory of his son becomes a search for the pregnant girlfriend he has left
behind.
