- Cathedrals by Claudia Piñerio
- Célina by Catherine Axelrad
- Repatriation by Ève Guerra
- Where the wind calls home by Samar Yazbek
- Claxton by Mark Cocker
- Lil is crying by Helene Bessette
- City like Water by Dorothy Tse
- The Sleep Thief by Ibtisam Azem
Well, August has come to an end, and the heatwaves may be behind us for this year. I managed 8 reviews this month, starting with a family coping years later with the death of a sister of a daughter and how the family carried on. From Claudia Pinerio (I was thinking about the Nobel the other day, and her name is one that maybe should be mentioned ). Then a tale of a maid in a writer’s house. A woman tries to bring her father home from Africa, mixing past and present. Then a man is dying in Palestine, looking back on his life. Then a year of nature, mainly in Norfolk. Then a mother controlling her daughter. A series of vignettes around a city that seems to be lost and there. Then a man in Palestine looks back on his life whilst being tortured.
I pick Cathedrals because I like how Pinerio told this tale and the way she used Carver’s story, unconnected yet connected in the way the short story unfolds and this book itself unfolds.
Non-book things
I think it has been a quiet month for music. I need to pick up Paul Heaton’s new album soon. Film. wise, it was a comfort-food month since I discovered the Great Player app, which streams a lot of Hallmark Mysteries. I’ve been watching a lot of them this month, comfort-watching on a hot day, trying to stay cool. The other film that I really enjoyed was H for Hawk, which was about the writer training a goshawk as a way to avoid dealing with the grief over her nature-loving photographer father.
Next month
I have a number of Latin American books I want to read before the end of the year. I also have a few possible Nobel contenders to look at like Can Xue and Amitav Ghosh, both of which I have been high on the Nobel prize betting in recent years with the sad loss of Peter Nadas last month, a writer that was always on the edge of Nobel betting add to the Atunes and Nooteboom have also passed this year which, if the committee keeps as it has recent years would be a female winner means theyd had to wait to 2027 anyway but I alway look at the betting as a list of discovery so when someone I havent’t read appears I tend to try and read them I also have an Aleixs wright book and I think she should be on the list of female writers. Who are your favourites to win this year ?
