Archive for the ‘Location’ Category

TEA TIME FOR THE TRADITIONALLY BUILT by Alexander McCall Smith

Not a believer that change is entirely for the better in Botswana society, Mma Precious Ramotswe, the “traditionally built” owner of the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency in Gaborone, has decided that cars are among the biggest agents of change, making people lazy. She has therefore decided to walk the two miles each way to her office, located beside the garage where her husband Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni operates a car repair service. She secretly admits, however, that the real reason she is walking is that her beloved little white van, now twenty-two years old, is making strange noises, and she fears that when Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni hears them that he will decide her little van can no longer be repaired.

May 27, 2009  Tags: ,   Posted in: Africa, Botswana, Fiction based on Real Event  No Comments

SNOW FLOWER AND THE SECRET FAN by Lisa See

SNOW FLOWER AND THE SECRET FAN is an epic tale which chronicles the lives of two Chinese women, Lily and Snow Flower. Set in a remote area of Hunan Province, Lily was born in 1823, “on the fifth day of the sixth month of the third year of Emperor Daoguang’s reign.” During her lifetime, Lily lives through the reigns of four emperors. Most Chinese girls had their feet bound and spent their lives in seclusion in nineteenth century China. Isolated and illiterate, they were not expected to think or to express emotions. They were expected to bear sons. However, the fortunate women living in Hunan villages of the Jian-yong region were exempt from some of this harsh oppression. They were taught to write a special women’s language and they were allowed, on occasion, to form special friendships.

May 26, 2009  Tags: ,   Posted in: 19th Century, China, Facing History, Fiction based on Time Period, Women's Fiction  No Comments

THE NATION. GUIDE TO THE NATION by Richard Lingeman

Not too long ago, a lady called the offices of The Nation and said she was “stuck” in Abbeyville, Louisiana. “I want to move, but I want to move to somewhere where I can see a Democrat before I die,” she said. This phone call was the catalyst for The Nation. Guide to the Nation—a fun and interesting if haphazard compilation of left-leaning hot spots, organizations and businesses around the country.

May 25, 2009  Tags: , ,   Posted in: 21st Century, Award Winning Author, Non-fiction, Political, Top Pick, Travel, United States  No Comments

SAG HARBOR by Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead’s newest “novel” is not strictly a novel at all. A book that he himself refers to as his “Autobiographical Fourth Novel,” it features a family that resembles his own—middle-class, upwardly mobile, and well-educated—a New York City-based family that spends summers at their vacation home in Sag Harbor, on Long island, “in the heart of the Hamptons.” Sag Harbor in 1985, the time frame of the action, has a large African-American summer community which owns compact homes on the beach, and a white summer community which lives uphill, with larger homes and panoramic views. For Benji, the fifteen-year-old main character, “There was summer, and then there was the rest of the year…It didn’t matter what went on during the rest of the year. Sag Harbor was outside the rules.”

May 23, 2009  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: 20th Century, African-American, Coming-of-Age, NE & New York  No Comments

HONOLULU by Alan Brennert

At least at the beginning of the 20th century, Korean fathers prized their male children as they would carry on the family name. Female children, whose sole purpose is to serve their brothers, fathers and husbands, languish without an education. This partly explains how the protagonist in this novel, HONOLULU, was named Regret. Not satisfied with her lot, Regret longs to read, write, learn English and not live in the shadow of her male family members.

May 22, 2009  Tags: , , , ,   Posted in: 20th Century, Award Winning Author, Book Club Choice, Facing History, Fiction based on Time Period, Hawaii, Multicultural, immigration  No Comments

THE SECRET SPEECH by Tom Rob Smith

Leo Stepanovich Demidov, a loyal member of the state security commission in the Stalinist Soviet Union of the nineteen-fifties, was introduced as a conflicted crime investigator in Tom Rob Smith’s first novel, CHILD 44. In that enormously entertaining thriller, Smith provided the backdrop of the authoritarian state that brooks no dissent, where security apparatchiks like Leo Demidov must bend their own judgement regarding others’ innocence and guilt, and must become ruthless instruments of its repression. In The Secret Speech, Smith’s second novel, it is 1956. Not only has Stalin been dead for three years, but his successor Khrushchev has just given his famous speech of February 1956.

May 21, 2009  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: Fiction based on Real Event, KGB, Russia, Thriller  One Comment