Once I have read an exceptional good book, I find it hard to find something to read again, And this year I have been enjoying some of the best sellers _ New York Times bestsellers.
First of course Dead Wake by Erik Larson, the extremely well researched history of the sinking of the Lusitania. But I have written about this in a previous blog and ARK has also concurred with me – this is a brilliant book, not to be missed.
Then I picked up The Girl on the Train, quite an unusual murder mystery. Although this book will not win the Pulitzer Prize for literature it is still an engaging story. A fun-read. ‘ Like its train, the story blasts through the stagnation of these lives in suburban London and the reader cannot help but turn pages.”—The Boston Globe
Alfred Hitchcock may have said all there is to say about the fallibility of making assumptions about what you see through a window, but, like most important lessons, this one can bear some repeating. To the limited scope of a window frame, the former London journalist Paula Hawkins, in her debut thriller, “The Girl on the Train,” offers a few additional obfuscations. First, her novel’s protagonist, Rachel, looks out through the window of a moving train on her daily commute. Second, Rachel is your basic hot mess: depressed, unemployed, still in mourning for the death of her marriage and prone to alcoholic blackouts that coincide with critical moments in the tale of a missing woman later found dead. Rachel might as well be wearing a sign that reads “Unreliable Narrator.” New York Times review.
The next book was Claire Fuller’s Our Endless Numbered Days – whose “bewitching debut takes us from the cosy confines of a London home to the dark heart of the forest, following the breadcrumb trail of eight-year-old Peggy Hillcoat. […] Like all good fairy tales, this is a book filled with suspense and revelation, light and shadow and the overwhelming feeling that nothing is quite as it seems in the Hillcoats’ lives. It’s spellbinding, scary stuff.”
—The Sunday Express
Is it all possible? I had to think about it. Are the characters for real, even the imagined friends? Oh yes for sure. But if you could survive that long in the wilderness I doubt very much.
And then Hausfrau. Jill Alexander Essbaum’s debut novel, but remember that Essbaum is first and fore mostly a poet which explains the beautiful prose.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “Sexy and insightful, this gorgeously written novel opens a window into one woman’s desperate soul.”—People
There are echoes in Hausfrau of those other frustrated wives, Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina. Here, as in those novels, we expect tragedy at the turn of every page.
So now I am reading for the second time ASA Harrison’s The Silent wife.
(I almost never read books twice so this should tell you something. The other book that I read twice was Julian Barnes A Sense of an Ending – superb.) “Harrison has spun a masterfully suspenseful tale in which the main plot point is given away from the beginning – no easy feat. It’s a story of the end of a marriage, the end of love and how long buried secrets can cast a long shadow.” – The Cleveland Plain Deale
Beautifully and superbly written. And had she lived I would imagine she would have gone on to win many literary prizes.
None of these above should ever be compared with the third rate book (and very poor movie) Gone Girl. Please.
I was never a fan of ‘Gone Girl’, and am glad I did not know that this novel, ‘The Silent Wife’ was being compared to ‘Gone Girl’. This is an entirely separate novel, connected only by the season, a summer novel/thriller. Amazon Review.
Apr 22, 2015 @ 07:20:00
They all sound pretty good. Now to find the time …
Apr 22, 2015 @ 09:41:33
I know… I read very late at night. maybe i should sleep 🙂
Apr 22, 2015 @ 07:31:08
I also read Julian Barnes’ A Sense of an Ending twice, it is a brilliant book. Thank you for these recommendations, I am most certainly going to read them. Take care.
Apr 22, 2015 @ 09:42:41
how very nice to hear from you. maybe I lost your email address? Please contact me.
Apr 22, 2015 @ 07:49:53
Girl on a train, maybe …. the others. Hmm.
I’m busy reading The Johnny Maxwell Trilogy ( Pratchett) again.
I am also trying to find some Tom Sharpe, but I fear I shall have to order, unless I’m lucky and turn up something in a second had shop.
Apr 22, 2015 @ 09:44:17
yes I would not recommend hausfrau to you, Quite a complicated psychological story. but The silent Wife is for men too, clever mystery.
🙂
Apr 22, 2015 @ 17:21:48
I was heading to the library in a bit. . This was good timing! Thanks!!!
Apr 22, 2015 @ 17:23:13
Oh good 😊
Apr 23, 2015 @ 16:34:27
Great that you are such an avid reader! I love that we both adore words. The Girl on the Train is everywhere right now, but I have yet to read it!
Apr 24, 2015 @ 06:00:27
I make time to read because it opens many windows. I used to be too busy until I got a Kindle and that changed everything, I started to read fiction too and realized how much I actually loved stories. If it is a page turner a book takes me about 4 – 5 days. If it is not that exciting it may even take me more than 3 weeks. Now I am busy with a delightful book – a memoir – Bettysville by George Hodgman that I am sure you will enjoy. So honest and so very , very funny.