I thought I’d post a few times today and tomorrow about the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ and what it means to me and to some of the authors and fictional and actual characters that I have on my bookshelves. I’m going to take turns blogging and house-cleaning and see how …
Category Archive: Literary fiction
Feb 17
Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
This novel from a Nigerian/American author is classified as young adult fiction in my library, probably because the narrator is fifteen years old, but I think it will resonate with adults of all ages, and with readers around the world because the themes–abusive relationships, religious legalism, freedom, and the source of joy–are all universal themes. …
Feb 09
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo’s epic novel is divided into five volumes: Volume 1: Fantine Volume 2: Cosette Volume 3: Marius Volume 4: Saint-Denis Volume 5: Jean Valjean In January I read, or rather re-read, the first two volumes, but I’m sort of stuck. I first read the entire novel when I was in college. This reading was …
Feb 04
Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan
Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive. ~Sir Walter Scott, Marmion, Canto vi. Stanza 17. My name is Serena Frome (rhymes with plume) and almost forty years ago I was sent on a secret mission for the British Security Service. I didn’t return safely. Within eighteen months of joining …
Dec 05
Christmas in Norway, c.1330
“It was the custom for all priests at Christ Church to give supper to the poor. But Kristin had heard that fewer beggars came to Gunnulf Nikulausson than to any of the other priests, and yet–or perhaps this was the very reason–he seated them on the benches next to him in the main hall and …
Dec 03
Christmas at Queens Crawley, Hampshire, England, 1823
“Christmas at the Hall was the gayest which had been known there for many a long day. On Christmas Day a great family gathering took place. All the Crawleys from the Rectory came to dine. Rebecca was as frank and fond of Mrs. Bute as if the other had never been her enemy; she was …
Jun 24
The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers
The Testament of Jessie Lamb is a book about teen rebellion and the end of the world, and it was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2011. The London Daily Mail called it “a wonderful evocation of teenage confusion, passion, and idealism.” I was not impressed. Ms. Rogers says in a note in the …
Jun 18
Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz
“The alleys, the houses, the palaces and mosques and the people who live among them are evoked as vividly in [Mahfouz's] work as the streets of London were conjured up by Dickens.” ~Newsweek I was struggling through Mr. Mahfouz’s epic novel, the first part of a trilogy set in modern Cairo, Egypt, and in the …
May 25
The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West
“[S]he had forgotten that it is the first concern of love to safeguard the dignity of the beloved, so that neither God in his skies nor the boy peering through the hedge should find in all time one possibility for contempt . . .” I’m not sure what that statement means, to guard someone else’s …
May 15
The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
Mr. Eugenides, Pulitzer prize-winning author of Middlesex, has given us a novel about the demise of the novel. It’s also a story that’s mostly about sex and its various permutations, but not really much about marriage, and equally about religion and its sundry incarnations, but not much about God. And I think the emphasis on …
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