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
"Ten days after the war ended, my sister drove a car off the bridge." More than fifty years on, Iris Chase remembers Laura's mysterious death. And so begins an extraordinary and compelling story of two sisters and their secrets. Set against a panoramic backdrop of twentieth century history, The Blind Assassin is an epic tale … Continue reading The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood
Daniel is a century old. Elisabeth, born in 1984, has her eye on the future. The United Kingdom is in pieces, divided by a historic once-in-a-generation summer. Love is won, love is lost. Hope is hand in hand with hopelessness. The seasons roll around, as ever... Autumn is the story of a young woman and … Continue reading Autumn – Ali Smith
