The latest addition to my website is Fumiko Hayashi‘s 浮雲 (Floating Clouds). Before saying anything else about it, I should point out that this Fumiko Hayashi is nothing to with the politician of the same name and the book is nothing to do with the 19th century novel of the same name by Futabatei Shimei … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Chiya Fujino‘s ルート225 [Route 225]. This tells the story of a teenage girl, Eriko Tanaka, and her brother, Daigo. One day, Daigo is late back from school and their mother is worried, as he had been previously arrested for stealing a bicycle. She sends Eriko to look for … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Chiyo Uno‘s 色ざんげ (Confessions of Love). This 1930s novel was written by a free-spirited writer who was also an expert in fashion. She claims that the story was actually told to her verbatim by her lover, the artist Seiji Tōgō. The story is about the very tempestuous and … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Fumiko Enchi‘s 女坂 (The Waiting Years). This a feminist novel about the mistreatment of women in the family of a well-to-do official at the end of the nineteenth/beginning of the twentieth century. Tomo is married to Yukitomo Shirakawa and they have two children. However, he has now decided … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Marlen Haushofer‘s Die Wand (The Wall). The story tells of an unnamed woman who is to stay with friends in a hunting lodge at the edge of the Austrian Alps. The plan is that she will arrive early and they will join her in the evening. They do … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Kate Atkinson‘s A God in Ruins. This is a follow-up to her quirky Life After Life. That book featured Ursula Todd. This book, which also features Ursula Todd to some degree, is primarily about her younger brother, Ted, and his daughter Viola. Apart from a little bit at … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Marianne Fritz‘s Die Schwerkraft der Verhältnisse (The Weight of Things), the first novel by the Austrian writer Marianne Fritz to be translated into English, thirty-seven years after it was first published. The novel tells the story of Berta Schrei nee Faust. During World War II, she loses her … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Paola Capriolo‘s Il nocchiero (The Helmsman). This tells the story of a helmsman, Walter. The job consists of driving a barge from a port, nominally containing animals, though he has never seen the cargo and does not know what is really in the hold. He takes it to … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jeanette Winterson‘s The Gap of Time. This is the first in a series of reimaginings of Shakespeare’s plays by well-known novelists. Winterson has chosen to do The Winter’s Tale, because, as she says, it is about an abandoned baby and she was abandoned as a baby. Winterson certainly … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Lesia Daria‘s Forty One. This is a novel by a woman born in the USA, of Ukrainian parents but currently living in the UK. Her heroine, Eva Holden, is, however, Polish, albeit with Ukrainian grandparents and living in the UK. Eva is an intelligent and educated woman but … Read more