Archive for the ‘End-of-Life’ Category

TINKERS by Paul Harding

I can honestly say that I have not read a book so evocative of place and time since reading anything by Faulkner.

May 27, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , ,  · Posted in: 2011 Favorites, Award Winning Author, Contemporary, Debut Novel, End-of-Life, Identity, Literary, Nature, NE & New York, Pulitzer Prize

BULLFIGHTING by Roddy Doyle

The thirteen stories in the collection BULLFIGHTING from Irish author Roddy Doyle examine various aspects of male middle age. Eight of these stories first appeared in New Yorker, and in this volume the post-boom stories collectively offer a wry, bittersweet look at the years past and the years yet to come. We see middle-aged men whose wives have left them, middle-aged men whose children have grown and gone, stale marriages, marriages which have converted lovers into friends, the acceptance of disease and aging, and the ever-looming aspect of mortality. Lest I give the wrong impression, these stories are not depressing–instead through these marvellous stories Doyle argues that middle age brings new experiences and new emotions–just when we thought we’d experienced all that life had to offer.

May 15, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , ,  · Posted in: Award Winning Author, Drift-of-Life, End-of-Life, Fatherhood, Ireland, Short Stories

STRANGERS by Anita Brookner

Anita Brookner is arguably one of the finest prose writers living today. Her keen precision and clean, stark sentences are edged with luminous turns of phrase and biting ironies. Her characters lead insular, lonely lives and rarely do anything optimistic with their existence, no matter how astute their insight.

Retired banker Paul Sturgis is no exception. He is 72 years old and lives a tightly circumscribed life. There is minimal pleasure in his activities, such as frequenting art museums, occasional travel around Europe, visiting his hairdresser, and his obligatory sojourns to a distant relative, Helena. Walking is his favorite activity, and it is during his perambulations that he examines his life in detail.

July 26, 2010 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: ,  · Posted in: Award Winning Author, Character Driven, End-of-Life, World Literature

THE WILDERNESS by Samantha Harvey

This book unsettled me. Its rendering of a mind descending (drifting? decaying?) into an Alzheimerian abyss is frightening in its deft, almost poetic, description. Indeed, it is disarming in its expanding degrees of what is normal to what is irrevocably and silently lost. If you worry about Alzheimer’s–and who cannot but worry–or have experienced it in your family, the tale told in The Wilderness, the story of Lincolnshire (England) architect Jake Jameson, will stun you. Simply and frighteningly stun you.

July 18, 2010 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: ,  · Posted in: Betty Trask Prize, Contemporary, Debut Novel, End-of-Life, Reading Guide, Unique Narrative

MAJOR PETTIGREW’S LAST STAND by Helen Simonson

There is a great deal to like in Helen Simonson’s debut novel, MAJOR PETTIGREW’S LAST STAND, whose protagonist is sixty-eight year old widower Major Ernest Pettigrew. The Major, who lives in a small English village named Edgecombe St. Mary, occasionally plays golf with his cronies, dines at the club, and is well-respected among the townspeople. Still, something is missing. He still remembers his late wife, Nancy, with longing, and he derives small solace from the indifferent ministrations of his only son, Robert, a self-centered social climber who has acquired a forthright and droll American girlfriend named Sandy. When Pettigrew hears of his younger brother’s death, he is overcome with grief, although the two had not seen each other much of late.

March 5, 2010 · Judi Clark · 4 Comments
Tags: , , ,  · Posted in: 2010 Top Picks, Debut Novel, End-of-Life, Family Matters, Humorous, Small Town, United Kingdom

BABA YAGA LAID AN EGG by Dubravka Ugresic

Baba Yaga is a star player in Eastern European myths. The Russian version involves a crackly old witch ready to spark terror in children’s hearts. Croatian author Dubravka Ugresic, in her wonderful book, BABA YAGA LAID AND EGG, lays out modern-day interpretations of this age-old myth. These “witches,” Ugresic tells us, are all around us—old women limbs curling from arthritis, shuffling along, waiting, pondering the end of their lives. The book is laid out in three sections—each a different take on the myth.

February 3, 2010 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , , , ,  · Posted in: Allegory/Fable, Croatia, End-of-Life, James Tiptree Winner, Literary, Russia, Translated, World Literature