Tag: K

Leaving the World by Douglas Kennedy

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About the Book

On the night of her thirteenth birthday, Jane Howard made a vow to her warring parents – she would never get married and she would never have children.

But life, as Jane discovers, is a profoundly random business. Many years and many lives later, she is a professor in Boston, in love with a brilliant, erratic man named Theo. And then she falls pregnant. Motherhood turns out to be a great welcome surprise – but when a devastating turn of events tears her existence apart she has no choice but to flee all she knows and leave the world.

Just when Jane has renounced life itself, the disappearance of a young girl pulls her back from the edge and into an obsessive search for personal redemption. Convinced that she knows more about the case than the police do, she is forced to make a decision – stay hidden or bring to light a shattering truth.

Like Kennedy’s previous highly acclaimed novels, Leaving the World, speaks volumes about the dilemmas we face in trying to navigate our way through all that fate throws in our path.

 

Reviewed by Chorus

A novel ripe for discussion: an entertaining but floored plot. Gave us a very good lively discussion comprising very different opinions

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The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

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About the book

From Subhash’s earliest memories, at every point, his brother was there. In the suburban streets of Calcutta where they wandered before dusk and in the hyacinth-strewn ponds where they played for hours on end, Udayan was always in his older brother’s sight. So close in age, they were inseparable in childhood and yet, as the years pass – as U.S tanks roll into Vietnam and riots sweep across India – their brotherly bond can do nothing to forestall the tragedy that will upend their lives. Udayan – charismatic and impulsive – finds himself drawn to the Naxalite movement, a rebellion waged to eradicate inequity and poverty. He will give everything, risk all, for what he believes, and in doing so will transform the futures of those dearest to him.

Reviewed by Perspectives

Divided opinions. Worth pursuing if you can read past the first few pages. Concisely written”

star rating ***

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The Dinner by Herman Koch

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About the book

An evening in Amsterdam and two couples meet for dinner. They need to discuss their teenage sons. The boys have committed a horrifying act, caught on CCTV. They remain unidentified – except by their parents. How far will each couple go to protect their child?

 

Reviewed by CC Readers

“Very subtle drip feed information. Very well written. Ironic humour. Different. Good gripping twist at the end”

star rating ***

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Tigers in Red Weather by Liza Klaussman

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About the book

Nick and her cousin, Helena, have grown up sharing sultry summer heat, sunbleached boat docks, and midnight gin parties on Martha’s Vineyard in a glorious old family estate known as Tiger House. In the days following the end of the Second World War, the world seems to offer itself up, and the two women are on the cusp of their ‘real lives’: Helena is off to Hollywood and a new marriage, while Nick is heading for a reunion with her own young husband, Hughes, about to return from the war. Soon the gilt begins to crack. Helena’s husband is not the man he seemed to be, and Hughes has returned from the war distant, his inner light curtained over. On the brink of the 1960s, back at Tiger House, Nick and Helena–with their children, Daisy and Ed–try to recapture that sense of possibility. But when Daisy and Ed discover the victim of a brutal murder, the intrusion of violence causes everything to unravel. The members of the family spin out of their prescribed orbits, secrets come to light, and nothing about their lives will ever be the same.

 

Reviewed by CC Readers

“Nearly all found this a gripping story, well-constructed and with beautiful description. A sinister undertone raised the tension throughout. The characters were real and complex. It is a remarkable achievement for a first novel”

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Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver

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About the book

“The flames now appeared to lift from individual treetops in showers of orange sparks, exploding the way a pine log does in a campfire when it is poked. The sparks spiralled upward in swirls like funnel clouds. Twisters of brightness against grey sky.”

On the Appalachian Mountains above her home, a young mother discovers a beautiful and terrible marvel of nature: the monarch butterflies have not migrated south for the winter this year. Is this a miraculous message from God, or a spectacular sign of climate change. Entomology expert, Ovid Byron, certainly believes it is the latter. He ropes in Dellarobia to help him decode the mystery of the monarch butterflies.

Reviewed by The Olive Tree

“Very well liked. Thoroughly recommend as an engrossing read”

star rating ****

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11.22.63 by Stephen King

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About the book

WHAT IF you could go back in time and change the course of history? WHAT IF the watershed moment you could change was the JFK assassination? 11.22.63, the date that Kennedy was shot – unless . . .

King takes his protagonist Jake Epping, a high school English teacher from Lisbon Falls, Maine, 2011, on a fascinating journey back to 1958 – from a world of mobile phones and iPods to a new world of Elvis and JFK, of Plymouth Fury cars and Lindy Hopping, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake’s life – a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.

With extraordinary imaginative power, King weaves the social, political and popular culture of his baby-boom American generation into a devastating exercise in escalating suspense.

Reviewed by Fareham Library 5.30

“This is a book most of us wouldn’t have chosen, but we were surprised that we did enjoy it. We liked the premise and the plot. We liked thinking back to life was in the 1960s. We agreed there was little character building and was a bit wordy in places”

star rating ****

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Ellis Island by Kate Kerrigan

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About the book

Rural Irish girl Ellie loves living in New York, working as a lady’s maid for a wealthy socialite. She tries to persuade her husband, John, to join her but he is embroiled in his affairs in Ireland, and caught up in the civil war. Nevertheless Ellie is extremely happy and fully embraces her sophisticated new life. When her father dies she must return home, but she intends to sort her affairs quickly and then return to her beloved America.

But once home her sense of duty kicks in and she decides, painfully, that she must stay to look after her mother and resume her marriage. Ellie is suddenly thrown into the simple, rural life she believed she had grown out of…

Reviewed by Perspectives

A light, easy read that didn’t do the subject matter justice. A missed opportunity to offer an in-depth study of the period. Not recommended for a reading group”

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The Rage by Gene Kerrigan

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About the book

Vincent Naylor, a professional thief, is fresh out of jail. His latest project, an armed robbery, is just days away. Bob Tidey, an honest, hardworking policeman, dedicated to public service, is about to commit perjury. Maura Coady, a retired nun living in a Dublin backstreet, is lost in bad memories and regrets. Then, she sees something that she can’t ignore, and makes a phone call that will unleash a storm of violence.

Reviewed by Museum

“A book full of Irish slang, describing crime in an Irish town as seen by young people at the turn of the century (2000 onwards) Disliked by women readers but perhaps would be more liked by young men

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On the Road by Jack Kerouac

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About the book

Sal Paradise (Sam Riley), a young innocent, joins his hero Dean Moriarty (Garrett Hedlund), a traveller and mystic, the living epitome of Beat, on a breathless, exuberant ride back and forth across the United States. Their hedonistic search for release or fulfilment through drink, sex, drugs and jazz becomes an exploration of personal freedom, a test of the limits of the American dream. A brilliant blend of fiction and autobiography, Jack Kerouac’s exhilarating novel swings to the rhythms of 1950s underground America, racing towards the sunset with unforgettable exuberance, poignancy and autobiographical passion. One of the most influential and important novels of the 20th century, On the Road is the book that launched the Beat Generation and remains the bible of that literary movement.

 

Reviewed by Museum

None of finished this book without a great deal of ‘skipping’ Probably we were too old for it and the book is now too old for the present time. Things like the wonderlust and a search for the meaning of life were new and exciting to the young of the Fifties. I personally feel I should have read it then – when I was young too! There are passages of vivid description – but much of it now seems self absorbed and old hat”

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The Conspiracy Club by Jonathan Kellerman

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About the book

When psychologist Dr Jeremy Carrier’s romance with nurse Jocelyn Banks is cut short by her kidnapping and brutal murder, he is left emotionally devastated and being watched by police seeking a prime suspect in the unsolved killing. When more women turn up murdered in the same gruesome fashion, the only way for Jeremy to prove his innocence is to follow the trail of a cunning psychopath.

Spurring on Jeremy’s investigation is Dr Arthur Chess, an enigmatic pathologist who draws Jeremy into the confidence of a cryptic society. But when Arthur suddenly slips away, Jeremy is left to contend with an onslaught of anonymous clues – and the growing realization that a harrowing game of cat and mouse has been started.

Reviewed by Alton Library – Thursday Group

“After the last few books this was a slightly better thriller; however views were very mixed. Some read it and enjoyed it, others only continued with it as it was a group book. Some intriguing twists and revelations but a few members of the group found it unbelievable. Okay but not highly rated – wouldn’t have picked it up ourselves ”

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