Archive for the ‘2009 Favorites’ Category

THE GARGOYLE by Andrew Davidson

THE GARGOYLE is one of the most gripping novels I have ever read. I am not one to usually read books more than once and I can probably count on two hands those novels that I’ve read two or three times. This is my second reading of THE GARGOLYE and it is even better the second time around.

November 21, 2009 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , , ,  · Posted in: 2009 Favorites, Horror, Psychological Suspense, Speculative (Beyond Reality)

ANNA IN-BETWEEN by Elizabeth Nunez

ANNA IN-BETWEEN is a novel about an unmarried, Caribbean woman in her late thirties, Anna Sinclair, who begins to understand herself as she comes to understand her parents. The novel explores issues of caste, race and culture in a moving, deeply poignant tale of mother and daughter. Anna goes back to the island of her birth as she does every year, but this time she stays for a month to spend more time with her aging parents…

November 14, 2009 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , , ,  · Posted in: 2009 Favorites, Caribbean, Class - Race - Gender, Family Matters, Latin American/Caribbean, Literary, y Award Winning Author

BORDER SONGS by Jim Lynch

In Jim Lynch’s critically-acclaimed first novel, THE HIGHEST TIDE, Miles, a thirteen-year old boy with a knack for being in the right place at the right time, discovers a giant squid on the shores of Puget Sound as it gasps its last breath. What follows is a miracle of nature as oceanic oddities and coincidences seem drawn to the teenage boy. Now, with his second novel, BORDER SONGS, also set in the Pacific Northwest but inland, Lynch has created another story concerned as much with unexplained coincidences and natural beauty as it is with its quirky characters.

November 13, 2009 · Judi Clark · One Comment
Tags: ,  · Posted in: 2009 Favorites, Canada, Contemporary, Literary, US Northwest

LOWBOY by John Wray

This is a brilliant book, a masterpiece. Because LOWBOY has the ability to bring about such intense emotional reactions and is so riveting, writing an adequate review of it is very difficult. It is like trying to describe why I get goose bumps when I listen to my favorite symphony played by the greatest orchestra or trying to describe why I felt the way I did when I first saw Botticelli’s paintings at the Uffizi Museum in Florence, Italy.

November 11, 2009 · Judi Clark · One Comment
Tags: , ,  · Posted in: 2009 Favorites, Contemporary, Literary, Unique Narrative

MANY AND MANY A YEAR AGO by Selcuk Altun

In the delightful, genre defying novel, MANY AND MANY A YEAR AGO, from Turkish author, Selcuk Altun, Kemal Kuray is the son of the Assistant Cemetery Director–a former sergeant-major who played the tuba in the local air force band. Kemal’s father’s unfulfilled ambitions spill onto his son, and Kemal grows up with the indoctrination that there is “no calling more noble than that of a fighter pilot.” In time, Kemal, forbidden to play with the other children in the neighbourhood, grows up “studious and disciplined,” winning a scholarship to boarding school and eventually accepted into the Turkish Air Force Academy. Graduating with the rank of Lieutenant, Kemal begins flying an F-16 and as a hotshot pilot he is slated to become the “future commander of the Air Force.” A plane crash leaves Kemal injured, depressed and grounded, and his promising career is over before it really began.

November 4, 2009 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Posted in: 2009 Favorites, Literary, Mystery/Suspense, Translated, Turkey, World Lit

GENEROSITY: AN ENHANCEMENT by Richard Powers

There are many reasons why Thassadit Amzwar should not be the way she is—always happy. For one thing, she has lost most of her family in the ongoing Algerian civil war. Her father is killed and her mother dies soon after from pancreatic cancer. She has left her home behind and is now a refugee studying in a mediocre college, Mesquakie, in Chicago. It is here that she runs into Russell Stone—who is teaching the creative writing course she is enrolled in…

October 18, 2009 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , , , , ,  · Posted in: 2009 Favorites, Contemporary, Literary, US Midwest, y Award Winning Author