January is so often associated with things new that it’s not surprising the theme for Spell the Month in Books this month is “new”. Jana, from Reviews From the Stacks who hosts the meme, has given us hints how we could interpret this — new releases, recent acquisitions, “new” in the title, etc.
I’m taking a different angle however, selecting books from my TBR that are by authors I’ve never previously read — so new in the context of “new to me.”
All the descriptions are based on entries in Goodreads.
J
Joannesburg by Fiona Melrose
” Set across the course of a single momentous day in 2013 (the day Nelson Mandela died) and narrated by a chorus of voices, Fiona Melrose’s second novel is a hymn to an extraordinary city and its people, an ambitious homage to Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, and a devastating personal and political manifesto on mothers and daughters, justice and love.”
A
The Abstainer by Ian McGuire
” An Irishman in nineteenth-century England is forced to take sides when his nephew joins the bloody underground movement for independence.”
N
Not so Quiet by Helen Senna Smith
This is an author I’ve never heard of but was drawn to buy the book because of the cover and the fact it’s a Virago Modern Classic. The Goodreads synopsis tells me it’s a semi-autobiographical novel based on the author’s experience as an ambulance driver working on the front line in France in World War 1.
U
The Unseen by Roy Jacobsen
“Ingrid Barrøy is born on an island that bears her name – a holdfast for a single family, their livestock, their crops, their hopes and dreams. Her father dreams of building a quay that will connect them to the mainland, but closer ties to the wider world come at a price. Her mother has her own dreams – more children, a smaller island, a different life – and there is one question Ingrid must never ask her.”.
A
After Lives by Abdulrazak Gurnah
This could be a good option for the African Adventures project I’m planning to start this year — the author was born in Zanzibar and the book is set partly in Tanzania.
“While he was still a little boy, Ilyas was stolen from his parents by the German colonial troops. After years away, fighting in a war against his own people, he returns to his village to find his parents gone, and his sister Afiya given away.
Another young man returns at the same time. Hamza was not stolen for the war, but sold into it; he has grown up at the right hand of an officer whose protection has marked him life. With nothing but the clothes on his back, he seeks only work and security – and the love of the beautiful Afiya.”
R
Red Azalea by Anchee Min
This is a memoir about Min’s experience of growing up in the last years of Mao’s China.
“As a child, she was asked to publicly humiliate a teacher; at seventeen, she was sent to work at a labor collective. Forbidden to speak, dress, read, write, or love as she pleased, she found a lifeline in a secret love affair with another woman.”
Y
The Yield by Tara June Winch
The Yield is a multi-generational story set in Australia that I know has been highly rated by several bloggers from that part of the world.
“Knowing that he will soon die, Albert ‘Poppy’ Gondiwindi takes pen to paper. His life has been spent on the banks of the Murrumby River at Prosperous House, on Massacre Plains. Albert is determined to pass on the language of his people and everything that was ever remembered. He finds the words on the wind.
August Gondiwindi has been living on the other side of the world for ten years when she learns of her grandfather’s death. She returns home for his burial, wracked with grief and burdened with all she tried to leave behind. Her homecoming is bittersweet as she confronts the love of her kin and news that Prosperous is to be repossessed by a mining company. Determined to make amends she endeavours to save their land – a quest that leads her to the voice of her grandfather and into the past, the stories of her people, the secrets of the river.”
If you fancy having a go at Spell the Month, you’ll find all the info you need on the website of the host, Reviews From the Stacks. The theme for February is “comfort reads”.
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