Helpful votes received on reviews:
93% (1,442 of 1,544)
Location: Ottawa, Ontario Canada
Birthday: 4 May
In My Own Words:
I enjoy sharing my thoughts about the books I read.
|
|
Reviews
|
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
"... The cultivated landscape of this farm has decayed so completely now, it is difficult to believe that the fields and orchards ever existed outside my own memories, my own imagination... ". With these opening lines Liz Crane, forty-year old entomologist and the central voice in Jane Urquhart's new, engrossing and most personal novel invites us into her world and into her mind. Having recently returned to the old Butler homestead, Liz feels she needs to reconnect with all that is familiar from the past. She lets her memories return to the fun-filled summers of her childhood, spent amongst her cousins and the rest of the extended family. They bring to mind the annual migration of the… Read more
|
|
|
Moscow at the turn of this century could be a dangerous place: almost anything could be bought or extracted for a price, and many people were, for one reason or another, in on some deal or scheme to get ahead in the business of money, comfort or influence. Life was also fragile, people disappeared without a trace, only to turn up as "snowdrops" during the spring thaw. With his debut novel, SNOWDROPS, AD Miller delves into the unfettered, yet also manipulated, period of early capitalism in Russia that followed the collapse of the Soviet regime. Part crime, part love story, Miller's fast-paced, fluidly written and engaging novel combines these elements within a chilling psychological portrait… Read more
|
|
|
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
...You wanted me to write it that way." I said, "we wrote it together." Yes, Agnes had wanted her lover to write her life story, but, until now she had not warned him how stories can influence her thinking and behaviour. The novel's opening sentences suggest that much in very short blunt sentences: "Agnes is dead. Killed by a story. All that's left of her now is this story." He, the nameless narrator, a Swiss author staying in Chicago for research for a glossy book on luxury trains, agrees to retell the story of their relationship. It lasted nine months. His previous success as a fiction writer had been modest, and his only effort at a novel abandoned, until Agnes rekindles his… Read more
|
Wish List
|
