Flora Poste at 19 has had a benevolent upbringing, wanting for nothing, and when her parents die in the Spanish ‘flu, leaving her a yearly sum that is (unfortunately) much less than she had anticipated, she decides that she needs to be able to continue with a gentle existence without (need I add) the alarming …
When Tokarczuk writes: ’… If people behave brutally towards Animals no form of democracy is ever going to help them, in fact nothing will at all.’ she sums up one of the main themes in this book: our attitude towards animals, and as a follow-on, our attitude towards each other. With each chapter opening with …
Beautifully and thoughtfully written this book, coloured by the aftermath of the war as well as the early years of modern psychotherapy, reveals a great depth of understanding, regarding human relations, actions and interactions. Constructed almost entirely using conversation, Mine Own Executioner could almost be equated with a play, although there are sufficient descriptive passages …
Things around us change, and as they change so must our way of relating to the changes. We may attempt to hold on to what we feel is right, sometimes for all the wrong reasons, but we can do nothing to stop things – ideas, perceptions, loyalties – from changing. Masuji Ono is an artist, …
Beautifully written and painfully tragic, this novel is about the unconditional, and at times seemingly unreasonable, love of a father for his daughter. Martijn van Vliet, a research scientist, and Adrian Herzog, a surgeon who has lost confidence in himself, meet by chance in Saint-Rémy. There are similarities between the two men; they are both …
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, …