A Hero of France will rank as one of the public’s favorite books by Alan Furst, I’m sure of it. It features Paris, everyone’s favorite destination, and a World War II French resistance cell operator, a protagonist of ready appeal for a large number of readers. And as usual, Mr. Furst does an excellent job of rendering the epoch in his details. Hero recounts a time early in the War, shortly after Germany began its occupation of the northern portion of France, including Paris. The Gestapo and...
July 10, 2016
"Submergence" by J.M. Ledgard
A British spy and a scientist-mathematician fall in love over Christmas at a Ritz in the French countryside, and then must go their separate ways. From there they each submerge into depths beyond their previous experience. In this simple framework bloom meditations of a challenging scientific and philosophical nature, such that they pretty well dominate the narrative. This is a contemplative novel, but it sustains a suspense in which life fences with death; and it is a scientific novel in which...
July 02, 2016
"Harvest" by Jim Crace
You learn in the first paragraph of Harvest that Jim Crace will be telling his story of an Old English village in a long series of lovely lilting iambs, a sweet rhythm carrying an ancient Anglo Saxon vocabulary of farm and manor and blood and dirt and death. I found myself reading slowly, enjoying the language as though I were reading a long poem written in feudal England. Surely that was the author’s intent, and he’s brought it off with assurance and style. This is a beautiful book. We’re...
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