The highly talented and National Book Award-winning author Colum McCann offers four shorter pieces in Thirteen Ways of Looking; they are varied and vivid, captivating and thought-provoking. Its memorable characters include a retired judge trying to fathom the self-absorbed boor who is his son; a lonely Marine stuck on a mountainside in Afghanistan on New Year’s Eve; a single mother of an adopted son who neither hears nor speaks; and an aged nun jolted into reliving days of torture from decades...
September 19, 2015
"The Bone Clocks" by David Mitchell
We meet lovely Holly Sykes in 1984 as a rebellious 15 year-old in Gravesend, a town in Kent fronting on the Thames. By novel’s end, she’s in her 70s, living in Ireland, with every reason in the world to be frantic and worried. The Bone Clocks centers on Holly and her adventure among some exceedingly unusual humans - humans who travel in time, have psychic and psycho-kinetic powers, and who cheat death for centuries. Holly provides the focus, but author David Mitchell provides the pyrotechnics....
September 05, 2015
"Amsterdam" by Ian McEwan
Two old friends fall spectacularly out in Amsterdam; it forms the plot of this Booker Prize-winning novel, and it makes an intriguing read, even if getting its lessons takes something out of you. Clive is a renowned composer working desperately to meet a deadline on a commissioned piece. Vernon edits a well-respected daily newspaper, on the verge of publishing a stunning front-page piece to ruin a prominent national politician. Author Ian McEwan achieves his best effects when describing the...
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