nomadreader

The backstory: Liars and Saints  was shortlisted for the 2005 Orange Prize . The basics: Liars and Saints  is the story of the Santerre family. Over four generations, the novel covers World War II to the present (when this book was published in 2003.) My thoughts: For years I've been saying I want to read all of the Baileys Prize longlists, but I don't actually do it, so I started a new project to at least make some progress to that lofty goal. (If I actually continue to make progress, I'll write a post about my plans.)  Liars and Saints  reaffirms why I have that goal. It's a book I had never heard of, by an author I somehow never heard of. Once I started reading it, I discovered she is someone so many of my bookish Twitter celebrity people adore. And with good reason. I'm such a fan, I checked out her other three adult books (one novel and two short story collections) from library when I finished the first chapter. (She also writes the Apothecary series for ...

The backstory: The Translation of the Bones  is on the 2012 Orange Prize longlist. Francesca Kay's first novel, An Equal Stillness , won the 2009 Orange New Writers Award. The basics: Set in a small Catholic church in Battersea, this novel features a priest and the three women who volunteer to clean and care for the church: Mrs. Armitage, Stella Morrison, and Mary-Margaret O'Reilly, a somewhat simple and somewhat disturbed young woman of deep faith and a questionable grip on reality. My thoughts: This novel opens with Mary-Margaret feeling a religious urge to deep clean Jesus on a cross in a side chapel. She injures herself while cleaning him and believes the statue bleeds and looks at her. Kay presented the four main characters well in the beginning, and this crucial scene, which forms the basis for the novel, leaves the reader wondering what exactly did happen to Mary-Margaret and where her reality connects with our shared reality.This scene sets the stage for many quest...

The backstory: In my pre-blogging days, I read Mrs. Kimble  by Jennifer Haigh and really enjoyed it. I didn't track my reading in my early post-college days, but it's one of those novels I remember specific scenes from, so I was eager to read Haigh's latest novel, Faith . My thoughts: Faith  puts a very human face on the issue of priest abuse. We hear about Art, who is accused of abusing a young boy, through his sister Sheila. It's an interesting narrative device to hear Art's story through someone else, but I appreciated it. It's a powerful narrative device and questions the very nature of story and how the storyteller shapes the audience's perceptions and knowledge. I also appreciated sharing the journey with Sheila. She shared my desire to know what happened. At some point, however, my desire as a reader shifted and the why became so much more important than the what. The verdict:  I adored  Faith , and it's a tribute to Haigh's writing and sc...