Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand. This quote from Shakespeare’s Macbeth informs the title and content of this book, the fourth in the Commissaire Adamsberg series by the French writer Fred Vargas. Adamsberg and a few collegues from his division are set to travel to Quebec for a forensics conference. His right hand man, Danglard is just sure that the plane will go down over the Atlantic ( a flock of starlings whoosh into the engines) and is dragging […]
We are who we must be.
This book, by the Swedish journalist Jenny Nordberg, explores the lives of the bacha posh in Afghanistan. A little known and even lesser acknowledged group, they are essentially girls who dress and behave and pass themselves off as boys until puberty. This is done for various reasons. In such a firmly patriarchal society, families that have borne no boys are considered failures at best, abominations at worst. Through it all, only the men, their fathers and (potential) husbands have the real power. Ms. Nordberg tells the story […]
Wounds heal. Love lasts. We remain.
The Nightingale follows the travails of two sisters in WWII era France. Vianne Mauriac is the timid, steady sister and Isabelle is the impetuous spitfire. After the death of their beloved maman, they are sent to live at Le Jardin, the Mauriac country home in Carriveau. Their papa, who has never been the same since coming back from the trenches of WWI, is unable to cope with the loss and he puts his two young daughters in the care of the cold and imperious Madame Dumas. Vianne […]
Burst!
I don’t even know where to start on this thing. Plum, the protagonist, is still whirling around my head and I’m not quite ready to let her go. The book starts out like any other chick lit-ish story. Plum is an overweight young woman who works in New York at a teen magazine called Daisy Chain, answering young women’s letters on the magazine’s website. She is in a constant cycle of dieting, denial and anti-depressants and has finally decided that the skinny girl inside needs […]