“In the end, each life is no more than the sum of contingent facts, a chronicle of chance intersections, of flukes, of random events that divulge nothing but their own lack of purpose.”― Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy What irritates Paul Auster most is when people think that The New York Trilogy is a detective story.... Continue Reading →
Book Review: ‘In Love’ by Alfred Hayes
Everything depended, my sleeping peacefully, my being able to work, my confidence in myself, upon the only bond by which I held her, the words, extracted not always quickly from her, that she loved me.Alfred Hayes, 'In Love' Through our narrator, a 40-year old man living in New York in 1950s, we are taken into... Continue Reading →
Book review: ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ by Jean Rhys
“Justice. I've heard that word. I tried it out. I wrote it down. I wrote it down several times and always it looked like a damn cold lie to me. There is no justice.”― Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys, a Dominican-born British author, wrote this story as a response to Charlotte Bronte's 'Jane Eyre'. In... Continue Reading →
Book review: ‘The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne’ by Brian Moore
Judith Hearne is a spinster past her 40s, living alone in Belfast after her only relative, her aunt died. The two items that she always puts in her room are her late aunt pictures and the Sacred Heart picture. The devotion to the Sacred Heart (of Jesus Christ) is a well-known Catholic devotion, and Miss... Continue Reading →
Book Review: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
“Wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.”Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude This book. I will definitely judge... Continue Reading →
Book Review: Angel by Elizabeth Taylor
‘Her vanity had been stunned by the way in which her book had been received. No trumpets had come thrusting out from behind the clouds, proclaiming ‘genius’ and ‘masterpiece’. For a long time nothing at all happened, and then, slowly, the abuse and sarcasm had begun. The very passages which she had been most proud,... Continue Reading →
Book Reviews: My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier
‘For God’s sake come to me quickly. She has done for me at last, Rachel my torment. If you delay it might be too late.’ The first short story of Daphne du Maurier that I read was 'Don't Look Now' which hooked me right away. Next, I read 'The Birds' and I knew that I... Continue Reading →
Book Review: Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali
‘Men and women have such a hard time understanding what we want from each other, and our emotions are so foggy we hardly know what we are doing. We get lost in the current. I don’t want that. If I have to do things thaf seem to me to be unnecessary and unsatisfying, I end... Continue Reading →
Book review: Katalin Street by Magda Szabó
‘But no one had told them that the most frightening thing of all about the loss of youth is not what is taken away but what is granted in exchange. Not wisdom. Not serenity. Not sound judgment or tranquility. Only the awareness of universal disintegration.’‘They had discovered too that the difference between the living and... Continue Reading →
Book Review: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
“always bear in mind that the person who speaks may be lying” ― Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd I spent my early teenage years obsessing over Agatha Christie books. My father has a complete collection of her books and he always urged me to read them - and because I exhausted my comic books and children... Continue Reading →