THE ROOM AND THE CHAIR by Lorraine Adams

Once a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist at the Washington Post, Adams, revisits familiar terrain—international terrorism—in her latest novel, THE ROOM AND THE CHAIR. Set alternately in Washington D.C., Iran and the Afghan-Pakistan border, the novel looks at the interplay between the media and the government and how they work together to determine what information the public is really fed.

February 24, 2010 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , ,  Â· Posted in: Iran, Thriller/Spy/Caper, Washington, D.C.

THE FOURTH ASSASSIN by Matt Beynon Rees

On his arrival in New York for a UN speech on schooling in the refugee camps, Palestinian educator Omar Yussef goes straight to Brooklyn to see his son, Ala. But the door of the Bay Ridge apartment is open and the only occupant is a headless corpse about his son’s size.

His initial horror gives way to shocked concern when Ala appears, but is promptly arrested and taken off to a Brooklyn jail. Underdressed for the New York winter, disoriented by the hard-edged city, Yussef enlists the aid of his old partisan friend Khamis Zeydan, now the chain-smoking Bethlehem police chief, also in town for the UN meeting.

February 23, 2010 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , ,  Â· Posted in: New York City, Sleuths Series, World Lit, y Award Winning Author

SASHENKA by Simon Montefiore

Simon Montefiore is a Russian historian and an award-winning author of history books on the subject of Stalin and Potemkin. With SASHENKA, Mr. Montefiore has applied his vast knowledge to historical fiction. His expertise really enhances this novel, filled with characters that come to life on the page, along with an absorbing and moving storyline that spans the end of Russia’s Tsarist regime, the Bolshevik Revolution, life under Lenin and Stalin, and, finally, to 1994, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

February 1, 2010 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: ,  Â· Posted in: Facing History, Russia, World Lit

INVISIBLE by Paul Auster

INVISIBLE is my first Auster novel. It’s odd that I never got around to reading him before, but his name came up a few months ago–in praiseworthy terms–from someone whose literary opinions I respect, and so when Auster’s latest book appeared, it didn’t take much to convince me to grab a copy. While the novel is ostensibly the story of what happens to a promising young student named Adam Walker, Auster’s cleverly-constructed tale examines much larger issues, such as the impenetrable nature of truth, the long-lasting affects of grief, the savage tentacles of colonialism and fascism, and the passivity and futility of “good” in the presence of determined evil.

December 26, 2009 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: 2009 Favorites, Contemporary, Literary

THE LACUNA by Barbara Kingsolver

In Barbara Kingsolver’s THE LACUNA, Harrison Shepherd’s odyssey through three tumultuous decades of the 20th century begins in a lonely boyhood between two worlds – America and Mexico. It continues through the Depression and World War II, and culminates in the ugly, surreal hysteria of the Red Scare.

Along the way Shepherd mixes plaster for the great Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, becomes a confidant of his colorful wife, the artist Frida Kahlo, serves as secretary to the exiled Bolshevik, Leon Trotsky, and becomes a celebrity in his own right. Readers will bond with his kind soul, his boundless curiosity, his youthful exuberance and his self-deprecating wit as he experiences the best and worst his times have to offer.

December 10, 2009 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , ,  Â· Posted in: Latin American/Caribbean, Literary, Mexico, Orange Prize, Unique Narrative

EATING ANIMALS by Jonathan Safran Foer

Full disclosure: I am a vegetarian. It’s not a label I really think much about because it was never a conscious choice. I was brought up in a Hindu vegetarian home and eating meat was totally out of the question. Over the years it has become a matter of habit and taste.

Jonathan Safran Foer’s path to veganism started when he became a new father. He wanted to research the foods he would soon be feeding his infant son and in no time came upon the juggernaut—the factory farm.

November 18, 2009 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: ,  Â· Posted in: Non-fiction