This is the third book of Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet. Elena Grecco, narrates the story from the present, probably at about age 60. Her lifelong friend, Lila, has disappeared in recent months, and she recounts their lifelong relationship. The first two books described their childhood in a poor neighborhood of Naples. The second book follows them as adolescents, their world expands out of the neighborhood and into adulthood, with both girls following very different paths. At the beginning of Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, […]
Teenagers: Not so Mysterious, Not so Interesting
This is the fourth or fifth book by Tana French featuring one or more members of the Dublin Murder Squad. There is a lot to like about her series: she gives us a contemporary and interesting Dublin, the stories are usually imaginiative, and there’s a tiny touch of mysticism here and there. I like the fact that each book is written from the perspective of a different detective, but familiar characters from past books make appearances as well. Like her previous books, I found myself […]
Not Grokking this One
This book is part of my effort to read a few books in the science fiction genre, and while I loved Ursula LeGuin’s The Left Side of Darkness, Stranger in a Strange Land left me bored and disappointed. Yes, this book is over fifty years old and the imagined future is not the present, yet it seems so incredibly dated. It felt very black and white, bouffant hair-dos, white lab coats intermingled with flying taxis and space travel. The story begins with a human mission […]
You’re Not Paranoid, You Really Have No Privacy
The title of this book really is Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (WTF). As it clips along you find yourself wondering: who can you really trust? Who is watching you and why? Who is the greater threat: government or unregulated big corporations? We’ve given up our privacy willingly, but what else are we giving up? What if we’re giving away ourselves, only to have to buy it back? And why am I laughing? Leila, a non-profit worker stationed in Myanmar, is familiar with a government […]