From page one, I fell in love with the language of the book, its meandering pace, and the voice and temperament of the narrator.
At 78, Noe Crowe looks back on the year he
lived with his grandparents in a remote County Clare village when he was 17.
His time there coincides with the arrival of electricity in western Ireland, an
event that will change a way of life that has been the same for centuries.
Noe befriends his grandparents’
lodger Christy—an older man who is an equal parts conman, dreamer, and guru—and
their adventures, along with the convoluted progress of the electrification,
propel the story.
Because of this book, I find myself enjoying more moments
where I stop and say, “this is happiness.”
Shortlisted for Best Novel in the Irish Book Awards
Longlisted for the 2020 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction
From the acclaimed author of Man Booker-longlisted History of the Rain
'Lyrical, tender and sumptuously perceptive' Sunday Times
'A love letter to the sleepy, unhurried and delightfully odd Ireland that is all but gone' Irish Independent
After dropping out of the seminary, seventeen-year-old Noel Crowe finds himself back in Faha, a small Irish parish where nothing ever changes, including the ever-falling rain.
But one morning the rain stops and news reaches the parish - the electricity is finally arriving. With it…
I love this book because it so completely
submerged me in the life and surroundings of the protagonist, Nazneen, a young
Muslim woman who leaves her small Bangladeshi village to live in a London
council flat in an arranged marriage with an older man.
Ali conveys a visceral
sense of the stifling apartment, the tedious work, the bleak weather, and the
loneliness and dullness of Nazneen’s life. Not that it’s a place we want to be,
but we experience Nazneen’s yearning for escape so profoundly that we root
passionately for her as she pursues some degree of freedom and purpose.
A
master of the finest detail, Ali brings the sights, smells, and sounds ofBrick Lane to dazzling life.
Nazneen's inauspicious entry to the world, an apparent stillbirth on the hard mud floor of a Bangladeshi village hut, imbues in her a sense of fatalism that she carries across continents when she is married off to Chanu. Her life in London's Tower Hamlets is, on the surface, calm. For years, keeping house and rearing children, she does what is expected of her. Yet Nazneen walks a tightrope stretched between her daughters' embarrassment and her husband's resentments. Chanu calls his elder daughter the little memsahib. 'I didn't ask to be born here,' says Shahana, with regular finality. Into that fragile…
This is an adventure story with the highest
possible stakes. It portrays the most brutal and debased human urges and
doesn’t shy away from graphically depicting horrifying scenes of disease,
starvation, torture, filth, and death.
At the center is Aminata Diallo, who was
kidnapped from Africa as a child and sent into slavery in North America. In
her, Hill has created one of the most luminous characters in contemporary
literature. Her voice speaks directly to our hearts with breathtaking
authenticity and intelligence.
The beauty of her spirit and the strength of her
hope, not to mention the power of her narration, triumph over the suffering and
injustice, making this a heart-expanding read.
Kidnapped from Africa as a child, Aminata Diallo is enslaved in South Carolina but escapes during the chaos of the Revolutionary War. In Manhattan she becomes a scribe for the British, recording the names of blacks who have served the King and earned their freedom in Nova Scotia. But the hardship and prejudice of the new colony prompt her to follow her heart back to Africa, then on to London, where she bears witness to the injustices of slavery and its toll on her life and a whole people. It is a story that no listener, and no reader, will…
Cora Sledge, an
82-year-old widow, lives on junk food, pills, and cigarettes. When her kids
force her into The Palisades, an assisted living facility, Cora decides that
truth is the best revenge and begins to write a tell-all journal that reveals
the secret she has guarded since her teens.
In entries that are profane,
profound, and gossipy, she chronicles both her past and the day-to-day
dramas—including her budding romance with a suave new resident, feuds with her
tablemates, and the sinister cloud of suspicion that descends as a series of
petty crimes sets everyone on edge.
