It would be a big surprise to me if this novel isn’t in my Top 10 at the end of the year. LOVED IT. Really good. Sucks you right in, keeps you spellbound, and I stayed up way way way past my bedtime finishing it as I was close enough to the end I just couldn’t go to sleep without finding out what happened!
Two murder detectives, close friends, draw a chilling case with very few reliable leads. And it seems it may be related to a case from years past, of three children disappeared into the wood, two gone forever, one returned with no memory of the events. That returnee being one of the two aforementioned detectives.
Told first person from Rob (Adam)’s point of view, extremely seductive stream of consciousness. As the case becomes more and more personal, his life gets more tipsy turvy…
Everytime I picked this up, I just wanted to sit and read for hours on end. Excellent!
(p.s. When I saw this in the bookstore, I couldn’t remember where I’d heard of it. Then I realized it was in Jessica Jernigan’s “recommended” column. )
Daily Archives: October 23, 2007
Romantic/Historical Fiction: “The Privilege of the Sword” by Ellen Kusher
Picked this up based on Marrije’s recommendation. Completely agree with her review. It’s charming and fun and has its racy moments (hello romance novel), but insightful and thoughtful and, more than anything else, it’s a story of a little girl gradually becoming in a woman, in a most unusual way. Really enjoyable, I’m definitely going to seek out more of her stuff!
Fiction: “The Rain Before It Falls” by Jonathan Coe
Really touching, slowly moving story. Told by a great-aunt, recording memories into a tape recorder, centered around pictures of relevant events. A really strong sense of time and place. A story about family and generations and what a child takes with them, even if unwillingly, from their parents. A story of cousins, become friends, and then estranged. A story of loves and jealousies and anguish and (some) joy. Really lovely.
Big Screen: Michael Clayton
I really didn’t fall for this movie as much as I thought I might after I read Jen’s reaction.
I did think George Clooney and Tom Wilkinson were great. Sydney Pollack’s character pissed me off just as much as he was supposed to. Tilda Swinton was good although I felt her “accent” slipped a few times (into frigid English bitch rather than frigid American).
But…I felt like it was an excellently acted/directed movie of something that’s been done before. So I wasn’t wowed. If you’re going to do a movie on corporate malfeasance, I think there’s a lot more to choose from these days than the same old/same old chemicals cause cancer role, and things that are more pressing/more topical (how about the government continuing to handout defense contracts to companies which were the ones already “supplying” the troops with inadequate supplies, non bullet proof “armored” cars, etc.).
Not only has the chemical angle been done before (going all the way back to Silkwood! and on through Erin Brockovich), along with the “those companies kill people who get in their way”, but also the sense of a whistle-blower (The Insider, among others).
So while I thought the performances were excellent, I didn’t think the movie really took a reach. I didn’t think it went somewhere that blew my mind, or should be award winning. (My mom called it “very competent and enjoyable.”)
But Jen loved it. So you might. And the friend that went with me came out of the theater saying “Wow, that was awesome!” (She felt this movie did some “new” spins on an old subject, say, the scenes of Tilda Swinton spreading out her clothes in the hotel rooms…)
Not so much, to me.