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When women develop the ability to generate electrical shocks from their own bodies, they literally have power at their fingertips. Suddenly, women are the stronger sex and society becomes a better place, right? Wrong.
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Epic and sometimes gruesome novel spanning the three centuries it took to rob North America of its ancient forest and the first inhabitants of their traditional ways of life. The writing is as monumental as the white pine that white men craved; both have the substance to stop you in your tracks.
Read more"During the Christmas holidays in 2004, an earthquake in the Indian Ocean triggers a tsunami that devastates fourteen countries. Two couples from Singapore are vacationing in Phuket when the tsunami strikes."
Beautifully structured and paced tale of two couples caught up in the Asian tsunami of Boxing Day 2004; their minor personal tragedies revealed by the major disaster. Deserving winner of the inaugural Epigram prize, Singapore's richest literary award.
I gave this novel a 4* rating on Goodreads
The second instalment of the DI Erica Martin series offers another slice of quality crime. Martin faces a "perfect storm" of a murder; so many suspects, so many motives, and a victim who is even nastier than the killer. These threads are all tied up with string in a satisfying conclusion.
If the previous, companion novel Life After Life is about, well, life... then A God In Ruins is about death. Melancholy pervades the many overlapping stories of four generations of the Todd family. Atkinson's command of structure allows us to move around in time to span almost a century of Teddy Todd's life; but we return again and again to WW2, to Teddy's role in Bomber Command, with the circular narrative (plus layer upon layer of imagery and motifs) delivering the same sense of inevitability as the central plot device of rebirth in Life After Life. Why? Why circle around one core experience of an unexceptional (for those swept into WW2) man's life? It's not simply a gimmicky plot device, surely? No, Atkinson has a point to make and saves it for the closing pages, when her writing is breath-taking (literally, I held my breath for about four pages) and beautiful and furious.