As always being a major slacker, literally months since I last posted here!
The Travelling Hornplayer by Barbara Trapido
This book was recommended highly by two friends so I suggested it to my book club for June's book. Turns out to have been a big winner as every single person who read it loved it! The novel's central vehicle is the death of a character who we never actually meet alive. Each of the other narrative voices is in some way connected to this character and/or her death. The novel is alternately funny and achingly sad and the different perspectives of the characters make for interesting reading. We get to see characters from multiple points of view and from their own. The best thing someone in my book group said was "Did anyone notice that she managed to write a 500 page novel in under 250 pages?" I plan to read all of Trapido's books.
What I Loved" by Siri Hustvedt
I didn't realize until after getting the book home that Siri Hustvedt is Paul Auster's wife. The book is about the relationship between two families in NYC. One of the characters is an artist and another an art history professor. You can tell that Hustvedt writes about art (she writes for Modern Painter and other art publications) because her descriptions of the art process and the art world are exquisite. The book is the memoir of one of the main characters and explores the way memory works, and doesn't and the implications of shared memories for family life. The relationships between the characters are wonderful and complicated and I really didn't want to leave them at the end of the book.
Property by Valerie Martin
This book is by the same author of Mary Reilly, which I've never read but remember that Julia Roberts played an unglamourous role in the movie version. Property is very, very short, but also incredibly powerful. The story's protagonist is a Creole white woman who lives on a plantation and the plot revolves around her relationship with the slave woman she brings into her marriage. I picked the book up because of a positive review blurb on the cover from Toni Morrison and I'm glad I did. It is a disturbing and thought provoking treatment of oppression and how the oppressors are so enamoured, and unquestioning, of their privilege that they are even able to make themselves out to be the victims.
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