The Breakdown by B.A. Paris

Cass was on the wrong road during a terrible storm. She saw a woman in a car in the middle of the woods, in the middle of the night. She did not stop long enough. She was too scared. It was raining so hard she could not understand why the woman did not ask her for help. Neither of them left their cars. The storm was rolling over them, preventing them to make contact, get out. When she arrived home she could not remember the mundane little things and needed her husband to remind her of appointments, events, invitation, setting the alarm clock. What was wrong with her? Why was it so difficult to pull herself together? And why could she not trust herself?

The answers came unexpectedly and too late.

I knew since the very beginning what was going on, but did not know how the drama would play itself out. Curiosity let me into almost the same predicament as the protagonist. Hers was serious. Cass was riddled with confusion and guilt. So was I, but for very different reasons. While she struggled to escape her situation, I had no intentions whatsoever to leave this psychological thriller and surface before the very end.

What a sad ending it was! I just wanted to cry for them all, while being relieved that it was over. What if she took a different route? What if ...

Water under the bridge, yes. For Cass the solution brought new possibilities and a new future. So it was a good ending. But was it really? After all that she went through Cass deserved a new tomorrow. An innocent, new born day...

This afternoon it was raining outside. Wonderful rain after three years of devastating drought. The four cats and two dogs were on the bed with me, listening to the storm outside. I was under a light blanket, reading as though my life depended on it. It was the perfect book for the perfect day.

I actually smiled when I finished this cozy book. Sadly I cannot tell you why ... :-))
I can tell you this, though, I will absolutely read this author again.

Excellent!

B A Paris grew up in England but has spent most of her adult life in France. She has worked both in finance and as a teacher and has five daughters. Behind Closed Doors is her first novel.

Into The Water by Paula Hawkins

Paula Hawkins, a freelance journalist from London, firmly proved herself as a versatile writer by publishing romantic comedies under her pen name Amy Silver, as well as huge successful thrillers under her own name. Girl On The Train was a phenomenal bestseller, which she followed up with this second thriller Into The Water.

This book reminds me a lot about The Casual Vacancy by J.K.Rowling(a magnificent read in itself). Both books have the community of a small town in common, who address the impact and involvement of all the inhabitants in solving a mysterious death, with various narrators relating the events to authorities and readers.

From the book's epigraph:

"We now know that memories are not fixed or frozen, like Proust’s jars of preserves in a larder, but are transformed, disassembled, reassembled, and recategorized with every act of recollection. Hallucinations ~ Oliver Sacks"

Breckford, a small town in the British Isles must come to terms with the death of a single mother. A multi-character tale is told in which the truth and the memories populating it, become a conundrum of regrets, secrets, lost opportunities and redemption. Everyone feels guilty, nobody is willing to take the blame.

Erin: "It's a fucking weird place, Beckford. It's beautiful, quite breathtaking in parts, but it's strange. It feels like a place apart, disconnected from everything that surrounds it. Of course, it is miles from anywhere - you have to drive hours to get anywhere civilized. That's if you consider Newcastle civilized, which I'm not sure I do.

Beckford is a strange place, full of odd people, with a downright bizarre history. And all through the middle of it there's this river, and that's the weirdest thing of all - it seems like whichever way you turn, in whatever direction you go, somehow you always end up back at the river.

Those who stayed behind after the latest death of Nel Abbott had to deal with the mysterious attraction to the Drowning Pool in the river for women committing suicide. It was the legends surrounding these mysterious deaths that attracted Danielle(Nel) Abbott to the pool for the book she was writing about these women and their demises.

After her own death, she leaves the unfinished manuscript, as well as a fifteen-year-old daughter behind, who has no father listed on her birth certificate.

Nickie: "Some of them went into the river willingly and some didn't, and if you asked Nickie - not that anyone would, because no one ever did - Nel Abbott went in fighting. But no one was going to ask her and no one was going to listen to her, so there really wasn't any point in her saying anything. Especially not to the police..."

From Nel's manuscript:

The Drowning Pool', Danielle Abbott (unpublished):
I decided, while in the process of trying to understand myself and my family and the stories we tell each other, that I would try to make sense of all the Beckford stories, that I would write down all the last moments, as I imagined them, in the lives of the women who went to the Beckford Drowning Pool.

Its name carries weight; and yet, what is it? A bend in the river, that’s all. A meander. You’ll find it if you follow the river in all its twists and turns, swelling and flooding, giving life and taking it, too. The river is by turns cold and clean, stagnant and polluted; it snakes through forest and cuts like steel through the soft Cheviot Hills, and then, just north of Beckford, it slows. It rests, just for a while, at the Drowning Pool."

As atmospheric as you can wish for; picturesque as you can get, and intriguing as you cannot imagine.

Although the numerous narrators created constant confusion, the storyline was never broken, and the suspense kept flowing strongly along the river of words pulling this gripping saga together.

This is an excellent crime thriller. One of those sleep-snatchers.

Another book in the same genre, worth reading is
Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg.

RECOMMENDED!!!

Paula Hawkins is a British author, best known for her best-selling psychological thriller novel The Girl on the Train, which deals with themes of domestic violence, alcohol, and drug abuse. Wikipedia

Born: 26 August 1972 (age 44), Harare, Zimbabwe

Education: Keble College, Oxford

Movies: The Girl on the Train

Awards: Goodreads Choice Awards Best Mystery & Thriller, Glamour Award for Writer

Little Indiscretions - a delectable mystery by Carmen Posadas

REVIEW:
Madrid. Costa del Sol. Spain.

“His moustache was thicker than ever, so stiff a fly could have strolled out to the end, like a prisoner walking the plank on a pirate ship. Except that flies can’t survive in a cold room and thirty below zero, and neither could the owner of the blond frozen moustache: Nestor Chaffino, chef and pastry cook, renowned for his masterful way with a chocolate fondant."

The famous clairvoyant Madame Longstaffe, with her Yoruba accent, predicted Nestor Chaffino of the Mulberry & Mistletoe - restaurant's death with her words: "He who believes he is mortally ill shall die not by his illness but by ice, and he who believes that words can kill should not keep them so close to his heart."

He had a little moleskin black book containing more than secret recipes. A few little indiscretions by ordinary people who hit behind their social high class, were dutifully recorded as well. Perhaps a book. Who knows? But he thought that Madame Longstaffe did not know about the little notebook at all.

Yet, the old woman insisted: "Do as you please, enjoy yourself, my friend, fall in love, write a scandalous novel, learn how to play the bassoon, whatever you like. Don't worry about your future, because Madame Longstaffe has seen it clearly: Nestor has nothing to fear until four T's conspire against him....For your luck to turn, four T's would have to join forces, and that could never come to pass, could it? Although coincidences do occur. The gods are fond of practical jokes."

Nestor, with his little black moleskin notebook of secret indiscretions did not believe in coincidences. He didn't think it was hard to cheat destiny, after all not after his own secret discoveries. Adela Teldi would have to stay where she was found, still locked up in that armoire, she, with her little indiscretions with its unforeseen consequences, her own homemade Greek tragedy, her own soap opera scandal. No it was not that hard to cheat destiny. If the gods can play tricks, so can he. "And then, predictably employing a gastronomical simile, he vowed that the little indiscretion would never be divulged, because coincidences, he thought, are like soufflés: they come to nothing unless someone takes the trouble to beat, stir, or otherwise agitate the egg whites."

The plot is so amazingly constructed. Every element in the story belongs there. A wide variety of social issues addressed with infinite finesse, often satirically, and all the characters are well defined.

Now that's the formal part of the review. What I find difficult to explain is how this book was not about thrifty detectives or whodunit-tricks pulled from a magician's imaginary black hat. It is a murder mystery, by any means, but oh so very different.

"With a real death and a couple of basic ideas, it is not hard to spin a story of passion, secrets, and malice, because lies can be perfectly convincing if they contain an element of truth."

Even this observation does not really explain why this murder mystery was totally different, and when someone is murdered, a confession will come. It is the form in which it is presented that will blow your socks of.

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AMAZON BOOK BLURB
A runaway international bestseller and winner of Spain’s top literary prize, Little Indiscretions is part ingeniously entertaining whodunit and part sparkling social satire.

Business is slow for Nestor Chaffino, pastry chef to the rich and famous, until he’s invited to cater a party in a villa on the Costa del Sol. When Nestor is found frozen to death in a walk-in freezer with a notebook in his hand, the party guests gathered that evening are the natural suspects. But who could have it in for a harmless cook?

The answer, it turns out, is just about everyone who happens to be staying in the house. Nestor, while quietly stirring his sauces and whisking his egg whites, had decided to publish a compendium of gastronomic secrets that revealed, along with the culinary tricks of his trade, more than a few damning details of the hosts’ and houseguests’ private lives. To what lengths would they go to ensure that Nestor maintained a more permanent sense of discretion?

Not since Nick and Nora Charles’s last cocktail party has such a merry band of mischief makers convened in one place. Little Indiscretions marks the discovery of a phenomenal writer with tremendous flair. It’s a gourmet treat readers will pounce on.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Photo source

She was born in Montevideo in 1953 as the daughter of a Uruguayan diplomat. She has lived in Madrid since 1965. Besides Madrid, she has also lived in many capital cities including Moscow, Buenos Aires, and London where her father was ambassador.

She went to Oxford University but left before graduating when she married Rafael de Cueto. They had two children, Sofia (1975) and Jimena (1978). She later divorced de Cueto and married Mariano Rubio. In 1985, she was granted Spanish nationality. In 1988, she became a host on Spanish public television RTVE.

She began her literary career in 1980 writing books for children. In 1984, she won the Premio Nacional de Literatura (Spanish prize of literature). In 1996 she published her first novel, Cinco Moscas Azules (Five Blue Flies) which was one of the most original and successful books of the year. Her second novel, Pequeñas infamias (Little Indiscretions), won the coveted Planeta Prize in 1998. Since then, she has sold more than a million copies in more than fifty countries and she has been translated in 23 languages. More recent successful books are "Childs Play" and "The Red Ribbon"
(Information source)

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GENRES: Spain, Costa Del Sol, Madrid, Murder, Mystery, Suspense, Drama

Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, Audio Cassette

Number of Pages: 320

Publishing date: July 12, 2005

Publishers: Random House Trade Paperbacks

ISBN-10: 0812966317

ISBN-13: 978-0812966312 

Original language: Spanish (title 'Pequeñas infamias')
Edition language: English

Literary awards:  Planeta Prize in 1998

Purchase links:  Amazon, Barnes & Noble

Fortunate by Andrew JH Sharp

Genres: British novel, African adventure, Mystery, Historical fiction, Drama, Suspense, Zimbabwe

Original title: Fortunate
Number of pages: 368
Formats: Paperback, Kindle, Nook

ISBN:  1783060018 (ISBN13: 9781783060016)

Publishers: Troubador Publishing Ltd

Publishing date: July, 1st, 2013

Edition language: English

Purchase links: Amazon, Barnes & Noble

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Amazon Book Blurb:

From the winner of the 2010 Waverton Good Read Award comes another good read. Beth Jenkins – locum doctor, semi-bereaved wife – runs away from home at the age of twenty-eight and a half and becomes heroine of a revolution.

Locked into a lonely future by a cruel twist of fate, Beth reaches breaking point, leaves her husband, and flees to faraway Zimbabwe. But there she finds herself at the centre of a deadly struggle for the ownership of a farm. From a guest of honour at the President’s table to a disastrous decision that betrays a good man, her fresh start threatens to end in catastrophe. Does the land, and its painted rocks, hold clues to atonement and re-found love?

Fortunate is an intelligent, moving novel with a gripping plot about how to defy fate and about the relationship we have with the land we live on.

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REVIEW

A true story embedded in fiction. From this angle the reader can expect that drama will be limited and characters cotton-wrapped. In a sense it is true.

Yet, Beth Jenkins, a locum doctor, young and somewhat lost in a one-year old marriage to the love of her life - who lost his mind, has enough on her plate, and enough inexperience to make a royal mess of things. Especially when she gets entangled with her patients such as Mr. de Villier. He needs a favor, and Beth has enough challenges, with her demanding mother-in-law, a new mysterious friend, Fortunate, and circumstances pressuring her, to evacuate her poshy life in England for the more intimidating African bush. 

Zimbabwe has just been liberated. What promised to be heaven soon proved to be hell-on-steroids for the inhabitants and a little bit better for tourists with pockets full of spending money. For illegal tourists it gets even more tougher and thrilling! The adventures are more intense, the ambiance volatile. That is where Beth's break from her own reality leads her to. She would make enough mistakes to last her a lifetime, but would gain enough new insight into a world her husband, as an archaeologist, discovered and loved. Her voyage will ultimately lead her home - a place she was unable to find before. Home. It is not what she thought it was.

It is a great story. A relaxing, informative, adventure. A soft-landing for anyone interested in reading more about the African lifestyle behind the glitz and glamour of an African Safari, but with the same intensity and feeling of being-there. Really being there. Nothing in the book is outrageously extravagant or overly exaggerated. On the contrary! ...

This is a really enjoyable book. It is multidimensional - covering the life of a young woman finding her path in life, meeting warm-hearted, sincere Africans, introducing tragicomedian politicians acting out their mafia-style looting of a continent's resources, and addressing loves lost and found. These elements serve a smorgasbord of different interests, which makes it an informative, great read. 

It is the second book of Andrew J. H. Sharp that I read. I am looking forward to the third, for sure. 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andrew Sharp's first novel, The Ghosts of Eden, won the 2010 Waverton Good Read Award and was shortlisted for the 2011 International Rubery Book Award.

Andrew was brought up in East Africa and has worked in Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe - where his second novel, Fortunate, is set. He is based in the East Midlands in the UK where he combines his medical work with writing.

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Nutmeg by Maria Goodin

Genre: Mystery,  Suspense, Fantasy, Satire, Drama, Relationships, Mother-Daughter relationships, Community, England, British author

Formats: Paperback, Kindle, Nook
Publishers: Legend Press 
Published date: March 13, 2012
ASIN: B007JVNOCE
Pages:304
Edition language: English
Original Title: Nutmeg
US Title: From the Kitchen of Half Truths
Australian Title: The Storyteller's DaughterPurchase links: Amazon,    Barnes & Noble

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US edition - kindle: From the Kitchen of Half Truths ; Nook edition

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Amazon Book Blurb:

Meg is growing up in a world of food filled fantasy; where her first tooth was so sharp her mother used her as a can opener, and eating too many apples once left her spitting pips. Then, age five, she is humiliated in front of the other children at school and turns her back on the world of fiction, deciding to let logic rule her everyday thoughts and deeds.

Years later, Meg's mother falls ill, and as she struggles to deal with the situation in an orderly fashion, her mother remains cocooned in her obsession with cookery, refusing to face up to her illness.

Slowly, Meg uncovers the truth about her childhood and is now faced with a humbling decision: to live in a cold harsh reality, or envelop herself in a wonderful world of make-believe.

Maybe life isn't defined as fact or fiction perhaps it can include truth, lies, and everything in between.

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REVIEW:

I loved the beginning of the book:

" I came out a little underdone. Five more minutes and I would have been as big as the other children, my mother said. She blamed my pale complexion on her cravings for white bread (too much flour) and asked the doctor if I would have risen better had she done more exercise (too little air). The doctor wasn’t sure about this, but he was very concerned about the size of my feet. He suggested that next time my mother was pregnant she should try standing on her head or spinning in circles (spinning in circles on her head would be ideal) as this would aid the mixing process and result in a better proportioned baby."

Meg's mom had an obsession with food which lead to the most outrageously funny fantasies about her daughter's first five years on this planet. At first I laughed, because the stories were so unbelievably creative and funny. I would not have minded to have a mother with an imagination like that all.

But truth be told, I was seldom so touched by a book that I sat with a mouth full of teeth, not knowing what to say in reviewing a book. If I blurted out 'magnificent', I still would have to explain why, in which case it will become necessary to quote this entire book in the review!

A 21-year old girl, Meg May, arrives home after earning a degree in science. She is coming home to take care of her dying mother. It is soon clear that mom's outrageous fibs and fiction hid a mystery about Meg's childhood that she was unable or unwilling to reveal to Meg. 

"Throughout her pregnancy my mother suffered all manner of complications. She was overcome by hot flushes several times a day which the midwife blamed on a faulty thermostat, and experienced such bad gas that a man from the local gas board had to come and give her a ten-point safety check. Her fingers swelled up like sausages so that every time she walked down the street the local dogs would chase her, snapping at her hands. She consumed a copious amount of eggs, not because she craved them, but because she was convinced the glaze would give me a nice golden glow. Instead, when the midwife slapped me on the back I clucked like a chicken."

As a young girl, the world of fairies and talking animals only brought rejection from Meg's school friends, which left her lonely and growing up fending for herself in the harsh world of school and mean neighborhood kids. Now, as a grown-up scientist, she wants her mother to finally face reality and tell the truth and stop dodging her own story. Meg is convinced that people who believed in fiction and fantasy were gradually rotting their brains. Their fictional world was destroying them day by day, like a maggot eating away at their brains. Life has taught her that science is the only way to address the world and it's challenges. Science is her way of addressing life. It is the social home where she finally is accepted and respected.

The gardener, Ewan, appears out of nowhere, starts talking to the trees, asks the frogs nicely to leave the garden and explains to snails why they are not welcome. Valerie, Meg's mom, finds a soulmate, which drives Meg to more antagonistic behaviour. But Meg has a few lessons to learn, of which the first one is that Ewan might sometimes have his head in the clouds, but his feet are firmly on the ground.

When Meg finally discovers the truth behind her mom's fantasy world, she is devastated. As she meanders back into her mom's past, she slowly begins the walk on the road of healing and understanding. Forgiveness comes slowly and quietly. 

It is the second mother-and-daughter book I read this year that had me in tears. First of longing and sadness, and then of joy. The biggest compliment a daughter can give her mother is to finally be able to say to her: " I am everything you ever taught me, even when you thought I wasn’t listening." 

My mom never had to tell me fairy tales like this. She did not have to rewrite my history for me like Meg's mom. This book shocked and shook me to my deepest core. This book is so multifaceted it is very hard to write a complete review on it without turning it into a dissertation! Apart from the delightful fibs and fantasy in the book, it also addresses a magnitude of emotions, perceptions, approaches and -isms that can enhance or destroy lives, depending on how we apply it to our own life stories. 

I recommend it to all mothers and daughters alike; to fathers and brothers who always wanted to know what the real magic in fairy tales is all about. 

I wanted to rate it five stars for excellent writing, originality and plot, but if it was possible, I would have added another five stars for the unbelievable emotional journey it invites the reader on. Nobody will walk away unscathed from this experience.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Maria Goodin was born in the South-East of England. Her first novel, 'Nutmeg', was published in the UK in 2012, and was based on an award-winning short story of the same title. The novel was published later that year in Australia under the title of 'The Storyteller's Daughter', and is soon due to be released in the US under the title 'From the Kitchen of Half Truth'. Book deals have also been secured in Italy, Germany, Spain and Sweden. Following a varied career which included administration, teaching and massage therapy, Maria trained to be a counsellor, and her novel was inspired by her interest in psychological defences. She lives and writes in Hertfordshire.

The Gospel of Silk - by Stephen Lee

Genre: Mystery, Murder, Suspense, Drama, Relationships, Memoir

Formats: Paperback, Kindle, Nook
Publishers: Createspace
Published date: October 2012
ISBN: 148003245X (ISBN13: 9781480032453)
Pages: 212
Edition language: English
Purchase links: Amazon,    Barnes&Noble

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Amazon Book Blurb:

William L. Payne preached silk as the salvation of the impoverished village of Rosewick in 1926. He persuaded investors his silk factory would make them rich and the region prosperous. He was mysterious, charismatic, and a little scary. He was said to have performed miracles, though he was anything but divine. He claimed to be an illegitimate son of Kaiser Wilhelm II, and nurtured the notion that he carried the German crown jewels in his little black satchel. Though Howard Godwin, 9, suspected Payne was a German spy, he became his devoted disciple . . . and his Judas.

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REVIEW:

This is one of those books that I bought from reading the Amazon blurb and looking at the cover design. I thought to myself: This book is talking to me. Take it. Of course I did. 

The more I got into the story of Howard Godwin, the more enchanted I became. Memories of a young boy meeting a charismatic William J. Payne in his hometown, Rosewick, got me in the end so mesmerized, I could feel my heart jumping with joy when a little bit of time became available and I could open the book to continue reading. 

Payne’s presence created an element of suspense and excitement in the humdrum life of the town, but would also change the history of this community forever.

Excitement...I cannot find the right words right now. But it is there and I am smiling, shaking my head and reveling in the innocent observations of a young-man-in-the-making, about his town, his friends, his absentee father (although he suspects he was kidnapped anyway) , the racial discrimination against one of his best friends, Woodrow W. Wade - alias Scooter, and the many other people playing a role in cementing his personality through the events that played itself out around the establishment of a silkworm industry in their town. 

Payne persuaded them that this poor region, no less than the exotic realms of the Orient and Europe was eminently suited to the production of this luxurious fabric, that no more was required than honest, diligent industry of the populace to make it blossom into a booming region of ordered mulberry orchards, bustling silkworm works, fine homes and genteel cultured people.

Payne would turn everything mundane or momentous into something magical. He just had with it took to turn the little town Rosewick into a place to remember for life. He was educated, sophisticated, and so refined.

Grave yards; old spooky homes; a magician who convinced the Pinewood school girls - who 'flocked to him like pigs to slop, that he was dead and buried for three days and crawled out of his grave; sixteen-year-old Amelia Hendershot who drove trucks and smoked cigarettes - all of it in the year 1926, got me losing sleep to read just a little bit more before reality knocked before daybreak again.

Somewhere, while being lost in this engrossing tale, I was thinking about the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and Huckleberry Finn, and innocent little boys becoming proud men with a wealth of memories to share. One of the people who would influence Howard's approach to life was his grandfather, who was just a teeny bit more cagier old bird than a lot of people.

I wondered where I could add words such as “prestidigitation,” and "mellifuously" in my review. The book constantly had me seeking wisdom in the dictionary. What a rich thrill!

“All of life is magic,” Payne said. “Think of it -- our birth, our life, our death, the power of herbs to heal, the feeding of our bodies, the movement of the blood through our veins. “That we know a little of the mechanics does not remove the magic. That there are explanations does not make it less a mystery in the end. We understand so little, and we make our beliefs so small.”

Mysteries are what make life interesting. It could not have become truer when a murder took place in the graveyard of Rosewick. The events afterwards would rob three young boys of their innocence forever. 

How sad it will be if this book slips through the grid and get lost to an audience it so richly deserve. I cannot stress enough how overwhelmed I was by the richness of the story, the colorful descriptions of the villagers' lives, the meticulous detail of the surroundings, and the completeness of the tale. It is one of those rare treasures you only find a few times in your life.

I recommend it to anyone who believes that real life hides its own mysteries and magic. Besides, it is based on a true story.

This spur-of-the-moment buy was a brilliant decision!

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Stephen Lee has worked for newspapers in places as far-flung as Maui and Manhattan. He is also a lawyer . He is married, and his wife of many years is an educator, author, and a talented china painter.

The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatjie

Original title: The Cat's Table 
ISBN 0224093614 (ISBN13: 9780224093613) 
Edition language: English 
Genre : Murder mystery, crime drama, literary fiction, cultural 
Kindle Edition : 290 pages 
Other Formats : Hardcover; Mass Market Paperback; Kindle, Nook, Audio CD 
Publishing date: August 30th 2011 by McLelland (first published January 1st 2011) 
Literary awards: Hammett Prize Nominee (2011), Scotiabank Giller Prize Nominee (2011), Dayton Literary Peace Prize Nominee for Fiction (2012) 
Purchase from Amazon , Barnes@Noble

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Amazon book blurp:

'What had there been before such a ship in my life? A dugout canoe on a river journey? A launch in Trincomalee harbour? There were always fishing boats on our horizon. But I could never imagine the grandeur of this castle that was to cross the sea'.

In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy boards a huge liner in Colombo bound for England. At mealtimes he is seated at the lowly 'cat's table' - as far from the Captain's table as can be - with a ragtag group of adults and two other boys, Cassius and Ramadhin. As the ship crosses the Indian Ocean the boys tumble from one adventure to another,and at night they spy on a shackled prisoner - his crime and fate a mystery that will haunt them forever...

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REVIEW: Michael was eleven years old that night when, green as he could be about the world , he climbed aboard the first and only ship of his life, the Oronsay, sailing for England from Colombo.

Unbeknownst to him, the twenty-one days at sea would become twenty-one years of schooling, molding him into the adult he would one day be, when he joined the cat's table, the least important place to eat on the ship.

The lessons he picked up from the adult company filled up several pages of his old school exercise books. He still had time to make those notes, amid the adventures in which he and his friends, Ramadhin and Cassius, engaged in on the ship. They witnessed an adult world filled with thieves, adulterers, gamblers, teachers, authority, natural healers, dreamers and schemers. Oh yes, and a shackled, dangerous prisoner. Each one of them becomes important in their lives through either their words or conduct. The ship had lots to offer for three young boys to keep them occupied. So many people, so many stories, so many intrigue. And then there was the ports of call...

Miss Perinetta Lasqueti was one of the guests around the Cat's Table. Their first impression of her manner was that of being like faded-wallpaper, but the more they found out about her, the more convinced they became that 'she was more like a box of small foxes at a country fair' . And with a good hand at shooting to prove it.

Mr. Mazappa - the boisterous, loud pianist would change their newly acquired perspective on old paintings with his approach to the angelic Madonnas in them, saying: "‘The trouble with all those Madonnas is that there is a child that needs to be fed and the mothers are putting forth breasts that look like panino-shaped bladders. No wonder the babies look like disgruntled adults." (p.213 - kindle edition)

Mr. Larry Daniels, the botanist, would teach them much more about his plants than they would ever need to know in their lifetimes.

Mr. Fonseka, the teacher, had a "serenity that came with the choice of the life he wanted to live. And this serenity and certainty I have seen only among those who have the armour of books close by."

I wanted to read this book for such a long time now. There was just something about it that told me it would roll me over and tie me down in its prose. It did. Some books just put themselves where it can be read because it is really that good. It is multifaceted. It is thought-provoking. It is excellent. It is one of those books you cannot walk away from easily. It has all the elements to promise that it will become a classic in time. I want to reread it. I just have to. Period.

ABOUT THE AUTHORMichael Ondaatjie was born to a Burgher family of Dutch-Tamil-Sinhalese-Portuguese origin. He moved to England with his mother in 1954. After relocating to Canada in 1962, Ondaatje became a Canadian citizen. Ondaatje studied for a time at Bishops College School and Bishop's University in Lennoxville, Quebec, but moved to Toronto and received his BA from the University of Toronto and his MA from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario and began teaching at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario. In 1970 he settled in Toronto. From 1971 to 1988 he taught English Literature at York University and Glendon College in Toronto.

One Night in Winter by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Genres: Historical fiction, Russian history, murder, mystery, community, family relationships
Formats: Hardcover(480 pages)(Barnes & Noble) Kindle(Amazon)
Published date: September 5th, 2013(UK), May 2014 (USA) by Century
ISBN 1780891083 (ISBN13: 9781780891088) 
Edition language: English
Purchase links: Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Amazon UK 

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REVIEW 
1945. Moscow, Russia. Jubilance raged over the war-ravaged city. Hitler was defeated. New beginnings lay ahead for a nation with promises of greatness by Stalin. The hope for normalcy raised slowly from the ashes.

The young Andrei Kurbsky saw “crumbling buildings, their façades peppered with shrapnel, windows shattered, roads pockmarked with bomb craters. Everything – the walls, the houses, the cars – everything except the scarlet banners was drab, beige, peeling, khaki, grey. But faces of the passersby were rosy as if victory and sunlight almost made up for the lack of food, and the streets were crowded with pretty girls in skimpy dresses, soldiers, sailors and officers in white summer uniforms. Studebaker trucks, Willys jeeps and the Buicks of officials rumbled by – but there were also carriages pulled by horses, carts heaped with hay or bedding or turnips, right in the middle of this spired city with its gold domes. Sometimes, when he closed his eyes in the heat and the world went a soft orange, Andrei heard laughter and singing and he was sure he could hear the city itself healing in the sunshine.” ` Life was starting over for everyone. The top officials in the Communist party were compensated with lavish lifestyle in the high-ceilinged apartments in the Granvosky building (otherwise known as the Fifth House of the Soviets), with dazzling corridors of capacious parquet floors and crystal chandeliers. Each official owned more than one chauffeur-driven car: open-topped Mercedes and -Packards, Dodge, Cadillacs, limousines, and Rolls Royces. It was also the home of Serafima Romashkina.

A new life was also starting for Andrei and his mother who just returned from exile in Stalinabad, “The Paris of Central Asia”, also known as “The Athens of Turkestan”. Everybody knew what that meant. “It was his tainted biography all over again.” Young, poor, optimistic, ambitious, inexperienced Andrei would meet Serafima.

It is a magnificent book: well written, extremely detailed, beautiful prose, spell-binding with no unfinished characters. The story is about a group of children and their families, every member, their teachers, and what happened to them, during the reign of Stalin. There were many love stories, too many, to be told. A historical novel at its best.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR 
Simon Sebag Montefiore is the author of the prize winning books Jerusalem: the Biography' and Young Stalin and the novels Sashenka and now One Night in Winter. His books are published in over 40 languages and are worldwide bestsellers. He read history at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge University, where he received his Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD).

The novel One Night in Winter is out now in the UK (5 September 2013) and in the USA in May 2014.

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