Tag: book-review

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Voice to the Voiceless and Hope to the Hopeless

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Introduction to DARK HOLY GROUND by Linda Granville DARK HOLY GROUND: A Journey into Activism to Give Voice to the Voiceless and Hope to the Hopeless is a deeply personal and politically potent memoir from British activist and writer Linda Granville. Set in Middlesbrough, a once-thriving industrial town devastated by deindustrialisation and economic abandonment, this book is both a testimony of survival and a call to moral action. Granville’s story begins in the heart of hardship: an unemployed single mother navigating life on society’s margins in a town where iron and steel, shipbuilding and the chemical industry once provided prosperity but now lie … Continue reading Voice to the Voiceless and Hope to the Hopeless

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Jetsam of our truths

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Booker Prize-longlisted Dublin-born, Irish author, resident of New York, Colum McCann’s epic novel Twist is about connection, disconnection and destruction. McCann watches seavengers on a coastal dump in Ghana collecting fragments of copper and rubber worth “a week’s worth of food” from discarded lengths of fibre-optic cable. In Twist, inspecting a damaged end of a data-carrying cable, Anthony Fennel, a journalist in pursuit of a story buried at the bottom of the sea: the network of tiny fibre-optic tubes that carry the world’s communication across the ocean floor and what happens when they snap. Separated from his son and sunk … Continue reading Jetsam of our truths

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Lives entwined but divided by love

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Zanzibar-born British novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, he said  “ I wouldn’t have picked me”, although his work does not fit the traditional mould of recent Nobel laureates. His novels were out of print in the US when his Nobel Prize was announced, who praised Gurnah’s “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee”. Gurnah, a refugee fled Tanzania during the 1960s Zanzibar revolution, and settled and lived in England for over fifty years. His latest novel “Theft”, is a captivating story of the intertwined lives of three young … Continue reading Lives entwined but divided by love

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Annie’s repressed upbringing

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Catherine Fox has written at least five books solo and an additional autobiography (“Fight the Good Fight”) which is an entertaining history of her life growing up and being a young mother and a martial arts aficionado together with being wife of a man working in the Church of England. She first had the above book published in 1997, and has clearly re-published this year, as afore stated. Catherine studied English in Durham and went on to get a PHD in Theology. She is a former diarist for The Church of England Newspaper and is a writer who can pack … Continue reading Annie’s repressed upbringing

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“RULE BRITANNIA” DAPHNE DU MAURIER – an eye opening strangely topical story featuring“US-UK”

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.First published in 1972 by Victor Gollanz Ltd this is Daphne Du Maurier’s last novel. Du Maurier wrote many fictional books and those adapted to film include: – “Rebecca”, “Frenchman’s Creek”, “My Cousin Rachel” and “The Birds”.Ella Westland pointed out – “The author had known the story of Peter Pan since early childhood. Her father Gerald du Maurier regularly played Captain Hook on stage since Daphne was born and observed Emma plays Wendy to Mad’s Peter Pan, Mad’s boys being the six adopted lost boys adopted by The Darlings. Westland has a book in print “Reading Daphne . A Guide … Continue reading “RULE BRITANNIA” DAPHNE DU MAURIER – an eye opening strangely topical story featuring“US-UK”

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Who’s “Heiffer”?

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In the glorious summer of 1914, Emily Grey, a young Cambridge undergraduate is studying German in Heidelberg, where she meets Hans, a philosopher with grey eyes and long lashes, who wins her heart and asks her to marry him.  Grey, like all women at the time, has not been allowed to graduate -which may be why she has sympathies for the growing demand for women to have a vote. When the First World War intervenes, she is forced to return to England, leaving Hans behind to join the Imperial Navy. A year later, Emily is recruited to serve in fledgling Secret … Continue reading Who’s “Heiffer”?

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Glamour, greed from ruthless dealer, super curator and a fawning auctioneer

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“Artists are slaves to their vanity. But in the end, in time, they see things as they are”. Today’s commercial art world is a marketplace of extremes, mysterious dealing with unbelievable money, glamour with excess grubbiness, visions of great beauty, generosity, and greed. James Cahill give us the ruthless dealer Claude Berlins, who is only interested in dollar signs. The super curator Fritz Schein, is definitely involved.  A fawning auctioneer, Florian Roth, set on getting his hands on the collection of mega-rich octogenarian collector, Leo Goffman for the sale of the century. Lorna Bedford, whose gallery was the first home of … Continue reading Glamour, greed from ruthless dealer, super curator and a fawning auctioneer

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Happiness is contentment of having enough

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Paul Theroux, the bestselling novelist, travel writer and “master of the short story”  in The Vanishing Point, gives us an exotic but domestic, ranging from Hawaii to Africa and New England. Each focuses on life’s vanishing points – a moment when seemingly all lines running through one’s life converge, and one can see no farther, yet must deal with the implications. With the insight, subtlety, and empathy that has long characterized his work, Theroux has written deeply moving stories about memory, longing, and the passing of time, reclaiming his status, once again, as a master of the form. “I lost most … Continue reading Happiness is contentment of having enough

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Her love…

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Nigerian travel writer living in America, Chiamaka, alone in the midst of the pandemic, recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until – betrayed and broken hearted- she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Dream Count is a unremarkable story about three affluent Nigerian women, Chiamaka the writer, her best friend Zikora, a lawyer, and her cousin Omelogor, a financial executive.  They navigate their mid-thirties, wrangle with romance and manage dislocations of diasporic identity in the US.   Omelogor, is a … Continue reading Her love…

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Entangled pursuit of a fulfilling life

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Ohio-born fiction writer, Sittenfeld has a gift for making daily events of regular people compelling moment by moment, and take the readers in from the start and make them want to keep turning pages.  In “White Women LOL”, a woman urges a group of black restaurant patrons to take their drinks elsewhere, because they are crashing her friend’s birthday party in a private room – not realising that the period for which the room was rented has run out. The encounter is filmed which goes viral online, and tars the protagonist as a racist. She is also helping her friend … Continue reading Entangled pursuit of a fulfilling life