NEWLY BOUND
The Friend
Sigrid Nunes’ novel examines the magical bond between a woman and her dog in a heart-wrenching story of friendship, bereavement, love and healing. A woman’s close friend has taken his life, leaving her and Apollo, his Great Dane, in bottomless grief. She hesitantly agrees to give shelter to the bereft canine, who makes living in a small apartment that much more difficult. As dog and woman mourn the death of the dear one, they form a bond in this finely nuanced prose. Besides being about the bond that can be forged between man and animal (the narrator even convinces her landlord to allow her to keep the dog), it is about writers and writing. Nunez’s work, in this particular installation, is clever, mature, readable and worth re-reading.
Pretty Revenge
This emotionally-charged thriller is hot off the press, having been released just this July. In Emily Liebert’s fictional work, revenge is what’s important, no matter the cost. Well-heeled New Yorker Jordana Pierson has it all: wealth, glamour, arm candy of a husband, and a successful business. Her record is spotless and her dark past has been hidden away. But not from Kerrie O’Malley, an unemployed woman in a listless relationship. When Kerrie sees Jordanna, the woman who wronged her years before, a fire for revenge burns bright. She knows the stakes are high, but she will stop at nothing to destroy her. This one is an absolute page-turner, filled to the brim with plot twists and lots of suspense.
The Bride Test
Autistic American Khai Diep is of Vietnamese origin. Romantic encounters don’t come easy to him, although he has a successful career in Silicon Valley and looks like a million bucks. His mother decides to take his love life into her own hands, and, from a visit to Vietnam, brings along Esme Tran, in the hopes that she will eventually become her daughter-in-law. A deal between mother and son is sealed – Khai will spend the summer with Esme and eventually ask her to marry him, unless they are a total mismatch, in which case she returns to Ho Chi Minh City. Khai, well-adjusted to his solitary life, is already anticipating her return, but this humorous mix of highs and lows has something else in store for the potential couple. This is a compassionate story about the power of love and achieving a dream.
The Guarded Gate
New York Times bestselling author, Daniel Okrent, has recently given bookworms this intriguing 1920s’ read featuring eugenics, racial prejudice and senseless laws to keep America free from the ‘lesser races’. Scientists who argued that certain nationalities were inherently inferior provided the intellectual justification for the harshest immigration law in American history. Upper-class Bostonians and New Yorkers, who led the anti-immigration movement, used the eugenic arguments to successfully keep hundreds of thousands of Jews, Italians and other unwanted groups, including East Europeans, out of the US for more than 40 years. This insightful tale connects the American eugenicists to the rise of Nazism, and shows how their beliefs found fertile soil in the minds of citizens and leaders both in their country and abroad.
A Gentleman in Moscow
Amor Towles wrote a story full of old-world charm wherein readers can lose themselves to the now absent art of aristocracy, set in a period shortly after the Russian Revolution. Count Alexander Rostov refuses to endorse the spirit of the times and is imprisoned in Moscow’s Hotel Metropole. His extravagant lifestyle must be toned down to one of confinement in a tiny room with the bare essentials. As the years pass, the Count remains a perfect gentleman, never acknowledging his situation as ‘confinement’, let alone complaining about it. The novel is set in a cramped room of a single building, yet the author makes it entertainingly spacious, reminding readers that moral discipline is never outdated.
The Heart Goes Last
Margaret Atwood, famous for her brilliant story-telling in The HandmaId’s Tale, showed her literary prowess with this one. She puts the human heart to the test in this account of Stan and Charmaine, a couple struggling in the face of a socio-economic collapse. Unemployed and homeless, they live in their car, often having to protect themselves from street gangs. The going is tough until they come across the Positron Project, which would make life so much easier, or so they thought. Get ready for a gripping read in this sinisterly funny and unsettling tale about a not-so-distant future, where the legit are in lock-up, but the crooked roam free.
GOLDEN OLDIES
A Man Called Ove
This 2012 book from columnist and writer, Fredrick Backman, is all about slightly maverick Ove living in Sweden after the death of his beloved Sonja. He is a grumpy old man who represents the slowly fading generation of a by-gone era where one’s physical abilities and knowledge were what made a man. Readers say it ‘touched the soul’, made them laugh till they cried, and rendered them speechless, in spite of taking time initially to get used to the writing style. The plot is engaging, with humour, grief, love and wit thrown in in equal measure. This book became a phenomenon, with its far-from-charming central character being the much-discussed topic at reading groups, talk shows, office-cooler-talk and parties.
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine
This was one of those novels that captured hearts and minds; one that became a favourite with book clubs around the world. The story is centred around isolation, as many know it, in the modern world, where the protagonist, Eleanor, has built a small, exclusive world around herself, doing nothing outside of going to work, returning home and spending her weekends bingeing on store-bought pizza. Her journey from awkward oddball to something different speaks to readers. Author Gail Honeyman has landed a couple of awards for her debut into novel writing, which has been translated into 30 languages thus far. The film rights to the story have been bought by none other than Reese Witherspoon – need we say more?
