The Finkler Question

I was nervous about reading this book, in spite of its accolades - I profess to knowing very little about Jewish culture and only slightly more (but far more embarrassingly) about the current situation in Israel and Palestine. I figured this book would have too many Jewish in-jokes and be a bit heavy going.

I'll admit it: I was totally wrong. Jacobson is very witty and entertaining. If there were in-jokes (likely), then I was oblivious, but the wonderful thing was, it didn't matter. There was enough beginner-Jewishness in the book so as not to alienate the novice reader.

Julian Treslove is a very well fleshed out character - it is easy to become involved in his quest... for Jewishness? I still couldn't really say!

I read so fast now that I am travelling so often, the stories wind up going by too quickly, or being too bitty; I am absorbed, then I am not. I forget all too easily what happens, the names of characters, the crucial final page. Initially this blog was meant to be a memory jogger - revisiting books in my mind would make them more real, help to keep them alive. It is helping to a point.

Home comforts

A recently developed obsession for beautiful cookbooks. I'm absolutely atrocious at cooking, which almost classes as an excuse for these!



These espresso cups were a Christmas present from my aunt and bring me such joy lined up like this next to the lampshade.

Brooklyn

Colm Tóibín has a wonderful way of writing very simply and beautifully, characters that are constructed so daintily but sharply like the tips of sharpened pencils or the first time you saw a pixel perfect photograph. That might sound pretentious but it is this clarity of character and of writing that makes his novels so absorbing and realistic.

Brooklyn is a novel about a young woman, Eilis Lacey, who moves from Ireland to New York in the 1950s. Initially homesick, Eilis settles in New York without realising, and then unexpectedly has to return to Ireland finding that she has almost outgrown her old home town. So far, so coming of age.

Part of my love of this novel was a bit of an obsession I have at the moment for the simple life, which Brooklyn, being set in the fifties, has in abundance. But personal whims aside, it is a beautiful story.

Rabbit, Run

I wish I had more time to devote to a review of this book - at the time of reading it really effected me. I remember loving it, but in an unspecific way that is so often the case after I have been reading a book deeply and one of the reasons I started this blog. The story is of Henry "Rabbit" Angstrom, who is struggling with the banality of his life. From the blurb on the back of my copy, it seemed to be about a journey, beginning with him driving away from his family through the night. He returns, however, but never stops running, which seemed both surprising and inevitable every time it happened.

I have no shame: The Girl who Played with Fire

Sometimes, especially I find when you spend long days working hard, your concentration lags and reading anything classed as literary fiction seems far too strenuous for an evening. This is the second in the series of the perfect antidotes to literature boredom: thrilling page turners, escapism.