Reading Horizons: Episode 7
Reading Horizons: 11 July 2018
Currently reading
The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa
This is a debut novel which is based on a true story of a wealthy Jewish family who manage to get papers enabling to leave Berlin in 1949 to make a new home in Cuba. But as they approach Havana, they learn that the government has changed its mind and will deny admittance to all but a few of the passengers. The ship has to return to Europe with its passengers fearing for their lives. Seventy years later a young girl in New York receives a package of letters from a great aunt in Cuba, a delivery that inspires Seven decades later in New York City, on her twelfth birthday, Anna Rosen receives a strange package from an unknown relative in Cuba, her great-aunt Hannah. Its contents inspire her to to travel to Havana to learn the truth about her family’s history.
Recently Finished
Missing Fay by Adam Thorpe
One of the best books I read last year was Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor which looks at the reactions of a community when a teenage girl goes missing on New Year’s Eve. Adam Thorpe’s novel is also an ensemble narrative that begins with a missing teenager but takes a slightly different path by focusing on six individuals who had a connection —sometime fleeting — with the missing girl. The book proved more enjoyable than I expected because Thorpe peppers it with symmetries of detail whose significance only becomes apparent when you reach the end. It’s the kind of book that you immediately want to re-read once you’ve got to the end, convinced that there were so many details that you missed the first time.
Reading next
It has to be The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst. In my recent post about the 50th anniversary of the Booker Prize, I said I was going to mark the event by reading the remaining books from my list.
After that I might make a return visit to Louise Penny whose Chief Inspector Gamache series set in Canada, is my favourite detective crime reading. I feel I’ve neglected her of late.
Reading Horizons is linked to WWWednesday, a meme hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words. It involves answering 3 questions:
The three Ws are:
What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?
I am currently reading All the President’s Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward and I am going to finish it today, darn it! I recently finished Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng, for a reading group, and was left with distinctly mixed feelings. Next I plan to read The Way Station by Clifford Simak, the Hugo Award winner for 1964. Then…I finally got Rachel Kushner’s new novel Mars Room from the library. Can’t wait! She is one of the most intelligent writers I know these days.
The Thorpe sounds good although I haven’t got on very well with his writing in the past.
I think I started reading Ulverton when it was published but didn’t get very far with it. I suspect you’d also find Missing Fay not as good as Reservoir which I remember you rated very highly Susan
I did, last year’s book of the year for me. Perhaps best avoid the Thorpe then.
Not necessarily – I wouldn’t reject it just on that basis because it is a bit different
I read one of Adam Thorpe’s early novels ‘Still’ and liked it so might give this a go – sounds interesting, especially off the back of loving Reservoir 13 too. I’d not heard of the Canadian detective novels you mention so will look out for those.
Oh you are in for a treat with Louise Penny – they are set in a little village in Quebec which is inhabited by some tremendous characters. This is the order of the books. https://bookertalk.com/future-projects/chief-inspector-gamache-series/
Though you can read them out of sequence it does help if you start at the beginning.
Thanks for advice. Have decided to try it on audiobook while walking dog(!) so downloaded first in series yesterday!
That would work well – I do like audiobooks when walking
These all look really tempting. Thanks for sharing…and enjoy your week.
I think you’d like the German Girl most Laurel