This book was one of those that I liked, but I also didn’t much like it, or at least I didn’t really like or understand the characters in it. Yes, that’s it exactly. I didn’t understand a single one of the many characters in this book. And that’s not entirely my fault. In Commonwealth, one of the children of a blended family falls in love with a much older writer and ends up telling him stories about her childhood. And he ends up writing […]
Jo Nesbo gives us a new sub-zero thriller
The Redeemer is a whopping good police procedural, with the inimitable Harry Hole up against all the usual demons—first and foremost, his own depressive alcoholism, but also the deaths of those close to him, a supervisor who just doesn’t get him, the love of his life who can’t be around him, and the darkest, coldest, most oppressive setting author Jo Nesbo can bring to life. I got the chills reading this and had to wrap a blanket around me, even in the middle of the […]
A work of Dickensian depth and breadth
This nearly 800-page novel is a revelation – it is one of the more complex literary works I’ve read in a long time and proved impossible to put down. The Goldfinch tells the story of precocious 13-year-old Theo Decker, who lives alone with his mother in New York City until their unplanned visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the day terrorists decide to blow the museum up. Theo’s mother dies in the disaster, but Theo survives and manages to extricate himself and return […]