A yellow bird With a yellow bill Was perched upon My windowsill. I lured him in With a piece of bread And then I smashed His fucking head… (Traditional U.S. Army Marching Cadence) This beautiful, devastating book follows two young boys – John Bartle is twenty-one and Daniel Murphy (Murph) is only eighteen – during …
Viktor Frankl, who founded the third school of Viennese psychotherapy, that is to say logotherapy (the search for a meaning in life as a central motivational force), was sent to one of Hitler’s concentration camps in 1942, an ordeal he barely survived. His own experience coupled to the experiences of others confirmed his theory that …
One may be excused for thinking that The Lincoln Highway, covering around 600 pages, is predominantly about the Lincoln Highway, a highway stretching across the American continent, from New York to San Francisco; in actual fact it is more about New York City. Revolving around three 18-year-old boys – Emmett, Duchess and Woolly – as …
Yield (baayanha): … the things you give to, the movement, the space between things. It’s also the action made by Baiame (God figure) because sorrow, old age and pain bend and yield (…) a bend in humiliation just like we bend at our knees and bow our heads. Bend, yield. I liked the way Winch …
In the small village of Stonesmere in the Lakes District it is the end of term, and the Day One concert performance at the primary school is underway. It is called Day One because it is aimed at the four-year-olds who will be starting school after the summer break; as the headmaster likes to say, …
Miss Barbara Buncle lives in a small English village called Silverstream where nothing much happens and where everyone knows everyone else’s business. She begins writing down observations of her fellow villagers and then decides to develop her observations into a book (with changed names of course). Her publisher, Arthur Abbott, is delighted with his bestselling …
The Moving Finger writes; and having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a word of it. This beautiful book, set in Samarkand, is divided roughly into two parts. The first part tells the story of the 11th …
The sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale after a 35-year gap, The Testaments is both absorbing and well researched. I would imagine that it is possible to read The Testaments without having read The Handmaid’s Tale, but as The Handmaid’s Tale provides the essential background to the story it probably makes sense to read it first. …
Bill Furlong sells logs, turf, coal and anthracite. He lives somewhere near Waterford, is married and has five daughters. His mother was a single mother, taken in by a kindly Protestant woman without whom both she and the baby would doubtlessly have ended up in a workhouse, or worse. Now in his forties he is …
A beautiful but completely devastating book where the first few chapters are similar to entering some rambling old mansion by a side door. After losing oneself in endless corridors and a variety of rooms, both large and small, one finally reaches the main staircase, and suddenly everything slots into place. Covering the period from the …