Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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About Zirza

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I am an English teacher from the Low Countries. Like everyone else I aspire to one day write a Booker Prize Winner, but until then I contend my self with reading stuff and writing about it. I try to keep the bitchiness to a minimum, but sometimes I can't help myself. In my spare time I enjoy complaining about the weather and sleeping. I lack the attention span for good books and the tolerance for bad ones. I am stuck in literary purgatory. Hey, at least it's warm here. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: Zirza's Quick Questions interview.)

Zirza's Reviews:

Unfinished Business

How the Dead Speak (Tony Hill & Carol Jordan #11) by Val McDermid

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An old convent is bought by a property development company. Soon, work begins on the grounds, but it’s not long before the skeletal remains of forty young women are discovered. The bones are old – years, sometimes decades – but it begs the question: what, exactly, happened at the convent, where girls with nowhere to go were taken in? Why were the secretly buried, and why did their families receive no word of their passing? The ReMIT team, specialising in serious crime, investigates, though why […]

But Now Am Found

The Hunter by Tana French

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Cal Hooper is a former Chicago detective. Grown weary of his job, he’s upended his life and moved into a run-down fixer-upper in the small town of Ardnakelty, in an unnamed part of the Irish countryside. He’s found his place in the community, and that includes his girlfriend Lena and unruly, stoic teenager Trey, whom he teaches carpentry in an attempt to get life back on track. It works right up until the point where Trey’s long-lost father Johnny makes his return from London, bringing […]

Book for thee but not for me

The Reformatory by Tananarive Due

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Twelve year old Robbie Stevens grows up under the Jim Crow laws of northern Florida. It’s  the 1950s, and though the institution of slavery has been abolished nearly a century ago, in practice, life is tough, especially since Robbie’s mother has died and Robbie’s father, a community organiser, has been branded a rabble rouser by the town’s white population and has fled for Chicago, leaving Robbie in the care of his sixteen year old sister Gloria. When Gloria is accosted by her wealthy white neighbour’s […]

I Love Swiss Cheese But Not As a Plot Device

The Overnight Guest by Heather Gudenkauf

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True Crime writer Wylie’s life is a mess: she’s divorced, she’s having a fight with her teenage son, and there’s a book that needs finishing, so she does what any sane person would do: rent the house where the crime she’s writing about took place (the place has been uninhabited for twenty years, but is somehow still livable, unvandalised, and connected to the grid) so she can finish her novel. Of course, a snow storm rears its head, cutting off the electricity. Of course, she […]

Same as it ever was

The Colony by Audrey Magee

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Ireland, 1979. Painter Lloyd gingerly takes a dinghy to a remote island off the Irish Coast, where he can lock himself in with the natives and paint for the summer. The natives eye him with wariness; they are happy to take his money and, in exchange, feed him, but they mistrust his motives. Not long after, French linguist JP also arrives on the island. JP is writing a dissertation about the Irish language spoken on the island; a language which is on the decline as […]

Bergère d’Azur Infinie

The Wedding People by Alison Espach

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Phoebe is a professor of Victorian literature; something which informs most of her decision-making. When her husband leaves her for a younger, more attractive colleague after a long fertility journey, Phoebe takes a page from her tragic heroines and decides she no longer wants to live. She checks into the beautiful if ostentatious Newport Hotel with the intent of swallowing a bottle of painkillers while enjoying an overpriced ocean view. The only problem is that the hotel has been fully booked by a wedding party, […]



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