Contemporary Fiction Recent Picks

January 2009

The underlined titles will take you directly to our catalogue.
Some featured items are linked via a book cover to enable you to read more reviews.

2666, Roberto Bolaño ; translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer. (2008)
"Santa Teresa, on the Mexico-US border, is an urban sprawl that draws in lost souls. Among them are three academics on the trail of a reclusive German author; a New York reporter on his first Mexican assignment; a widowed philosopher; and a police detective in love with an elusive older woman. But there is darker side still to the town. It is an emblem of corruption, violence and decadence, and one from which, over the course of a decade, hundreds of women have mysteriously, often brutally, disappeared." (Amazon)

The fire gospel, Michel Faber. (2008)
"Theo Griepenkerl is a modest academic with an Olympian ego. When he visits a looted museum in Iraq, looking for treasures he can ship back to Canada, he finds nine papyrus scrolls that have lain hidden for two thousand years. Once translated from Aramaic, these prove to be a fifth Gospel, written by an eye-witness of Jesus Christ's last days. But when Theo decides to share this sensational discovery with the world, he fails to imagine the impact the new Gospel will have on Christians, Arabs, homicidal maniacs and Amazon customers. Like Prometheus's gift of fire, it has incendiary consequences." (Book Cover)

La's orchestra saves the world, by Alexander McCall Smith. (2008)
"It is 1939 and the war in Europe casts a long, all-encompassing shadow around the world. In a sleepy town in Suffolk, the generous and determined widow, La, forms an amateur orchestra to entertain the locals and soothe her own broken heart. She recruits Felix, a refugee from Poland, to play the flute, and a touching friendship emerges. When the war is over and the orchestra disbands, La is left pondering her next move. What role can she play in her community now the war is over? And can she let herself love again?." (Amazon)

To Siberia, by Petterson ; translated from the Norwegian by Anne Born. (2008)
"In the years before the Nazis arrive, two young people growing up in Danish Jutland have dreams of leaving their frigid coastal town while coping with distant parents, eccentric family members, and the cold winds. In the aftermath of their grandfather's suicide, the arrival of puberty and most tragically, the German invasion, their idyllic childhood changes forever." (Book Cover)

Black Orchids, by Gillian Slovo. (2008)
"When the genteelly impoverished and rebellious Evelyn marries the charming Emil, scion of a privileged Sinhalese family, she thinks that her dream of a life in England can now at last come true. So the family travel, with their young son Milton, from Ceylon to Tilbury Docks. But this is England in the 1950s and, no matter how hard Evelyn wishes that it would, England does not take kindly to strangers, especially families who are half black and half white." (Amazon)

The English major, Jim Harrison. (2008)
"Cliff, a sixty-something man, divorced and robbed of his farm by a late-blooming real estate shark of an ex-wife, takes a road trip across America, armed with a childhood puzzle of the United States and a mission to rename all the states and state birds to overcome the banal names men have given them. Cliff's adventures take him through a whirlwind affair with a former student from his high school-teacher days, twenty-some years before, to a "snake farm" in Arizona owned by an old classmate; and to the high-octane existence of his son, a big-time movie producer in San Francisco." (Book Cover)

Angel of Brooklyn, Janette Jenkins. (2008)
"In January 1914, Jonathan Crane returns home to his remote village in the north of England with a rare thing a beautiful, glamorous American bride. Beatrice struggles to adapt to this cold, grey place, so different from the bright lights of Coney Island and tries to befriend the young women who are her new neighbours. They are in awe of her, her foreignness, her blonde hair, and her smart clothes. Beatrice, born and raised in Normal, Illinois, is a woman with a past. She tells them extraordinary stories of her father, an amateur taxidermist, of her brother, a preacher, and of her friends back home in Brooklyn. When the men head off to fight in the Great War, the women are left alone, the differences between them grow, and their fear and loneliness feed the jealousy they harbour for this mysterious newcomer." (Book Cover)

Brute force, by Andy McNab. (2008)
"Days after his car erupts in a ball of flame, Nick Stone narrowly cheats death a second time when a gunman opens fire on him from the back of a motorcycle. Who knows his movements? Who wants him dead, and why? Stone's only chance of survival is to carry the fight to his attackers, but first he must uncover a trail of clues that leads from his own dark and complex past into the heart of a chilling conspiracy that threatens us all." (Amazon)

Life's too short to frost a cupcake, Rosie Wilde. (2008)
"Alice has a steady job at Carmichael Music, a reliable boyfriend, a nice flat and a cleaning habit she can't just kick. But everything changes one Monday morning. Her kindly boss isn't there, but sends a mysterious text advising her to watch her back. And a new boss has arrived from the American head office: the extremely scary Phoebe Carmichael. Alice is sure she is about to be fired in a "streamlining" exercise, instead she's offered a dream job in America. Her brief: to persuade the once massively successful, now reclusive, recovering alcoholic singer songwriter Wyatt Brown to record a new album. Alice does not realize this dream job will change her life forever." (Amazon)

The road from Damascus, by Robin Yassin-Kassab. (2008)
"It is summer 2001, and Sami Traifi has gone to Damascus, escaping his fraying marriage and lack of direction and hoping to find some kind of clarity away from his chaotic London existence. But instead he discovers a forgotten uncle in a gloomy back room and an ugly secret. On returning to London, things still aren't looking better. As Sami struggles to understand his wife's newly deepened faith, his brother-in-law's hip-hop Islamism and his father-in-law's need to see grandchildren, so his emotional and spiritual unravelling begins to accelerate. And the more he rebels, the closer he comes to betraying those he loves, edging ever nearer to the brink of losing everything." (Book Cover)

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