Trudy has betrayed her husband, John. She's still in the marital home -- a dilapidated, priceless London townhouse -- but not with John. Instead, she's with his brother, the profoundly banal Claude, and the two of them have a plan. But there is a witness to their plot: the inquisitive, nine-month-old resident of Trudy's womb.. … Continue reading Nutshell – Ian McEwan
It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be given passage aboard the last flights out of the country. The general and his compatriots start … Continue reading The Sympathizer – Viet Thanh Nguyen
The final curtain is closing on the Second World War and in an abandoned Italian village Hana, a nurse, tends to her sole remaining patient. Rescued from a burning plane, the anonymous Englishman is damaged beyond recognition and haunted by painful memories. This Booker winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives: Hana, the … Continue reading The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
On a chilly February day, two old friends meet in the throng outside a London crematorium to pay their last respects to Molly Lane. Both Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday had been Molly's lovers in the days before they reached their current eminence: Clive is Britain's most successful modern composer, and Vernon is a newspaper editor. In … Continue reading Amsterdam – Ian McEwan
On the day of Barack Obama’s inauguration, an enigmatic billionaire from foreign shores takes up residence in the architectural jewel of “the Gardens,” a cloistered community in New York’s Greenwich Village. The neighbourhood is a bubble within a bubble, and the residents are immediately intrigued by the eccentric newcomer and his family. Our guide to … Continue reading The Golden House – Salman Rushdie
Brown University, 1982. Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English student and incurable romantic, is writing her thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot - authors of the great marriage plots. As Madeleine studies the age-old motivations of the human heart, real life, in the form of two very different men, intervenes.. Another coming of age novel from … Continue reading The Marriage Plot – Jeffrey Eugenides
We are our stories. We tell them to stay alive or keep alive those who only live now in the telling. Bed-bound in her attic room beneath the falling rain, in the margin between this world and the next, plain Ruth Swain is in search of her father. To find him, enfolded in the mystery … Continue reading History of the Rain – Niall Williams
Set across Istanbul and Oxford, from the 1980s to the present day, Three Daughters of Eve is a sweeping tale of faith and friendship, tradition and modernity, love and an unexpected betrayal. Peri, our main character, is prompted by an old polaroid photo of 3 young women and their professor, to reminisce about her time at … Continue reading Three Daughters of Eve – Elif Shafak
When he falls ill on his way home from school, fifteen-year-old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. In time she becomes his lover—then she inexplicably disappears. When Michael next sees her, he is a young law student, and she is on trial for a hideous crime. Set in post-war Germany, … Continue reading The Reader – Bernhard Schlink
“There was a time, and it was many years ago now,” Elizabeth Strout’s slim and spectacular novel begins, “when I had to stay in a hospital for almost nine weeks.” And it feels like she is going to tell us a story, the old-fashioned, uncomplicated kind. But only for a little while. A simple plot … Continue reading My Name is Lucy Barton – Elizabeth Strout
