Book Review: The Oracle of Stamboul by Michael David Lukas

Tuesday 6 September, 2011 By 2 Comments

Title: The Oracle of Stamboul
Author: Michael David Lukas
Publisher: Harper Perennial; Reprint edition
Publication Date: August 30, 2011
Paperback: 320 pages
ISBN: 978-0062012104
Genre: Historical Fiction

From the Publisher:

Ushered into the world by a mysterious pair of Tartar midwives late in the summer of 1877 in the town of Constanta on the Black Sea, Eleonora Cohen proves herself an extraordinarily gifted child—a prodigy—at a very young age. When she is eight years old, she stows away aboard a ship, following her carpet merchant father, Yakob, to the teeming and colorful imperial capital of Stamboul where a new life awaits her.

In the narrow streets of this city at the crossroads of the world, intrigue and gossip are currency, and people are not always what they seem. But it is only when she charms the eccentric Sultan Abdulhamid II—beleaguered by friend and foe as his unwieldy realm crumbles—that Eleonora will change the course of an empire.

My Review:

Exotic, mystical, and engrossing, The Oracle of Stamboul by Michael David Lukas takes the reader back to the last days of the Ottoman Empire and deep into Sultan Abdulhamid’s court. Purple and white hoopoes usher in the birth of Eleonora Cohen whose birth and life was foretold. Raised by her father and Aunt, young Eleonora is quite precocious and instead of being without her father she travels to Stamboul as a stowaway to be with him. Eleonora’s gifts are soon recognized by the Sultan, who invites her to court, relies on her knowledge and soon becomes interested in far more than her political acumen. Lukas has created a beautifully exotic debut novel that will take the reader back in time to the seat of the Ottoman Empire. Through vivid imagery and detail the reader will have little doubt they are in Turkey. The sights, sounds, and smells are so richly described it made me yearn to travel. Lukas has created a marvelous ensemble of characters and Eleonora is absolutely endearing, delightful, and mysterious. The Oracle of Stamboul was utterly fascinating in its exotic nature and mystical premise, and stunningly lyrical prose. Lukas has created a stunning debut novel and definitely is an emerging author to be watched. I highly recommend The Oracle of Stamboul to both readers and book discussion groups.

To learn more about Michael David Lukas please visit his website: www.michaeldavidlukas.com

For more reviews of the book, please follow the book tour.

I received a complimentary copy of The Oracle of Stamboul by Michael David Lukas from TLC Book Tours to be a part of this tour and offer my honest review of the book. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned book.

Filed Under: Book Review, Book Tour Tagged With: , ,

Book Review: Displaced Persons by Ghita Schwarz

Wednesday 31 August, 2011 By 10 Comments

Title: Displaced Persons
Author: Ghita Schwarz
Publisher: Harper Perennial; Reprint edition
Publication Date: August 23, 2011
Paperback: 368 pages
ISBN: 978-0061881770
Genre: Historical Fiction

From the Publisher:

In May 1945, Pavel Mandl, a Polish Jew recently liberated from a concentration camp, finds himself among similarly displaced persons gathered in the Allied occupation zones of a defeated Germany. Possessing little besides a map, a few tins of food, and a talent for black-market trading, he must scrape together a new life in a chaotic community of refugees, civilians, and soldiers. With fellow refugees Fela, a young widow, and Chaim, a resourceful teenager with impressive smuggling skills, Pavel establishes a makeshift family, as together they face an uncertain future. Eventually the trio immigrates to the United States, where they grapple with past traumas that arise again in the everyday moments of lives no longer dominated by the need to endure, fight, hide, or escape.

Ghita Schwarz’s Displaced Persons is an astonishing novel of grief, anger, and survival that examines the landscape of liberation and reveals the interior despairs and joys of immigrants shaped by war and trauma.

My Review:

Displaced Persons by Ghita Schwarz is a moving narrative of Jews displaced by the ravages of the Nazis and the decisions made by one family during the course of the decades following World War II.  Schwarz brings her characters to readers with very real and flawed personalities and in such a way that it is as if readers know these characters.  As we learn how Pavel, Fela, and Chaim all encountered their own individual struggles in the aftermath of the war where they were given the title “displaced person” or DP for short, Schwarz captures in vivid detail the life of these DPs in refugee camps where each had but a few possessions remaining after they lost almost everything to the Nazi occupations.  Displaced Persons is about sorrow, perseverance, endurance, and rebirth, and readers will feel nothing less than inspiration after witnessing the overcoming of suppressing and adverse conditions experienced by Jews who survived the Nazi occupations and the Holocaust.  This is not a simple or light read, but one that will give pause for reflection as readers are shown the dichotomy of emotions experienced, for example, where some were comforted by the liberation yet still had feelings of despair amidst the refugee camp conditions.  Told in three parts with the first exploring the immediate aftermath of the war, and the other parts looking out to the decades that followed where many of the refugees eventually emigrated to the United States, the long-lasting effects of the traumatic experiences of these people become evident as the characters search for meaning and release from the memories that no one should have to retain.  I strongly recommend Displaced Persons to readers looking for a deeper exploration of the long-term impacts of the Holocaust for this novel recognizes that the lasting injuries of survivors are not all physical.

To learn more about author Ghita Schwarz, please visit her website: www.ghitaschwarz.com

For more reviews of the book, please follow the TLC Book Tour.

I received a complimentary arc of Displaced Persons by Ghita Schwarz from TLC Book Tours to be a part of this tour and offer my honest review of the book. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned book.

Filed Under: Book Review, Book Tour Tagged With: , ,

Book Review: The Good Daughters by Joyce Maynard

Monday 29 August, 2011 By 6 Comments

Title: The Good Daughters
Author: Joyce Maynard
Publisher: Harper Perennial; Reprint edition
Publication Date: August 23, 2011
Paperback: 304 pages
ISBN: 978-0061994326
Genre: Fiction

From the Publisher:

They were born on the same day, in the same small New Hampshire hospital—but Ruth Plank and Dana Dickerson are different in nearly every way.

Ruth is an artist, a romantic with a rich, passionate, imaginative life—the fifth daughter born to a gentle, caring farmer and his stolid wife. Raised by a pair of capricious drifters, Dana is a scientist and realist whose faith is firmly planted in the natural world. From the 1950s to the present, the lives of the “birthday sisters” parallel and oddly intersect, as each struggles to find her place in a world in which she has never truly felt she belonged. Sharing little except a birth date—and a love for Dana’s wild and beautiful older brother, Ray—two virtual strangers will travel alternate paths winding through first love, first sex, marriage, parenthood, divorce, and tragic loss…until both are forced to reevaluate themselves and each other when past secrets and forgotten memories unexpectedly come to light.

My Review:

Heart breaking, beautiful, and life affirming, The Good Daughters by Joyce Maynard tells the story of Ruth Plank and Dana Dickerson, known as the birthday sisters. On July 4, 1950 at the peak of strawberry season in Bellersville Hospital, Edwin and Connie Plank welcomed their 5th daughter into the world and two hours later, the Dickersons were greeting their second child and their first daughter. Maynard writes a beautiful, moving novel, and from the beginning it is fairly obvious what will eventually be confirmed, however knowing does not detract from the story. The heart of The Good Daughters consists of the stories told through Ruth and Dana, two women who have lived dramatically different lives, yet each learned so very much from Edwin Plank, the lessons they have each accumulated over their respective fifty plus years of life, love, loss, and family. I found myself deeply engrossed in each woman’s story and noticed I particularly looked forward to the sections where Dana’s voice came through as I formed quite a fondness for Dana and her life with Clarice.  The Good Daughters is rich in detailed prose and an absolute delight to read even through the sadness and hardships told by Ruth and Dana. I would recommend The Good Daughters to anyone who is interested in reading a beautiful novel.  A word of caution, the reader may want to keep some tissues close at hand.

To learn more about author Joyce Maynard, please visit her website: www.joycemaynard.com

For more reviews of the book, please follow the TLC Book Tour.

I received a complimentary copy of The Good Daughters by Joyce Maynard from TLC Book Tours to be a part of this tour and offer my honest review of the book. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned book.

Filed Under: Book Review, Book Tour Tagged With: , ,

Book Review: Adam & Eve by Sena Jeter Naslund

Thursday 11 August, 2011 By 7 Comments

Title: Adam & Eve
Author: Sena Jeter Naslund
Publisher: Harper Perennial; Reprint edition
Publication Date: July 26, 2011
Paperback: 384 pages
ISBN: 978-0061579288
Genre: Fiction

From the Publisher:

By decoding light from space, Lucy Bergmann’s astrophysicist husband discovers the existence of extraterrestrial life; their friend, anthropologist Pierre Saad, unearths from the sands of Egypt an ancient alternative version of the Book of Genesis. To religious fanatics, these discoveries have the power to rock the foundations of their faith. Entrusted to deliver this revolutionary news to both the scientific and religious communities, Lucy becomes the target of Perpetuity, a secret society. When her small plane crashes, Lucy finds herself in a place called Eden with an American soldier named Adam, whose quest for both spiritual and carnal knowledge has driven him to madness.

Set against the searing debate between evolutionists and creationists, Adam & Eve is a thriller, a romance, an adventure, an idyll—a tour de force from Sena Jeter Naslund, one of the most imaginative and inspired writers of our time.

My Review:

Adam and Eve by Sena Jeter Naslund is a very interesting novel that explores the neverending battle between evolutionary scientific evidence and creationist beliefs through the experiences of Lucy and Thom Bergmann.  Set in the period about the year 2020, when Thom collects evidence for extraterrestrial life, he entrusts the information only to Lucy as Thom calculates that the world would not be prepared to receive such knowledge.  Naslund writes an interesting plot that takes readers alongside Lucy as she works to keep her now late husband’s information from becoming public knowledge.  In what is slightly too coincidental, Lucy is contacted by her late husband’s colleague who has discovered an alternate form of the book of Genesis and now Lucy must keep that information from leaking out as well.  The book’s title is an allusion to the place where Lucy finds herself after her small aircraft crashes in a place called Eden where she meets Adam, an American soldier who is not sane.  While I am not a fan of futuristic tales such as Adam and Eve, the basic theme of the divide between science and religion is truly engaging.  Naslund crafts a compelling tale in which she chose to pull out all stops to develop the plot, but unfortunately in doing so, the book’s overall coherence and direction appear blurred and misguided.  For me, it felt as if too many low probability events happen for Lucy when Naslund’s theme could have been more compellingly developed without making so many pieces fall into place.  While the novel was not in my favorite genres, Adam and Eve gives readers a lot to think about and I think fantasy/futuristic reading fans will enjoy Naslund’s Adam and Eve.

To learn more about author Sena Jeter Naslund, please visit her blog at: senajeternaslund.wordpress.com

For more reviews of the book, please follow the TLC Book Tour.

I received a copy of Adam & Eve by Sena Jeter Naslund from TLC Book Tours to be a part of this tour and offer my honest review of the book. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned book.

Filed Under: Book Review, Book Tour Tagged With: , ,

Book Review: Domestic Violets by Matthew Norman

Tuesday 9 August, 2011 By 10 Comments

Title: Domestic Violets
Author: Matthew Norman
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Publication Date: August 9, 2011
Paperback: 352 pages
ISBN: 978-0062065117
Genre: Fiction

From the Publisher:

Tom Violet always thought that by the time he turned thirty-five, he’d have everything going for him. Fame. Fortune. A beautiful wife. A satisfying career as a successful novelist. A happy dog to greet him at the end of the day.

The reality, though, is far different. He’s got a wife, but their problems are bigger than he can even imagine. And he’s written a novel, but the manuscript he’s slaved over for years is currently hidden in his desk drawer while his father, an actual famous writer, just won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His career, such that it is, involves mind-numbing corporate buzzwords, his pretentious archnemesis Gregory, and a hopeless, completely inappropriate crush on his favorite coworker. Oh . . . and his dog, according to the vet, is suffering from acute anxiety.

Tom’s life is crushing his soul, but he’s decided to do something about it. (Really.) Domestic Violets is the brilliant and beguiling story of a man finally taking control of his own happiness—even if it means making a complete idiot of himself along the way.

My Review:

Domestic Violets by Matthew Norman is an excitingly funny, yet tragically realistic debut about Tom Violet, a married man in his thirties who is encountering what is probably best described as the onset of mid-life blues.  Norman captures many of the sentiments felt by men and women alike who are at points in their lives where they ask questions such as: How did I end up with this kind of life?  Perhaps it is troubles with marriage, or an identity crisis stemming from aspirations to be as successful as one’s parents, or a job that is unrewarding, or co-workers who just make going to work dreadful at times.  Though these are fairly common feelings to encounter, Norman has christened Tom with each of these afflictions.  Readers will delight in Norman’s humor as Tom navigates his various predicaments with a not-so-nimble step that is rarely fully morally grounded.  Told through Tom’s eyes, it is easy to laugh along with some of his actions and cry in other circumstances, and with characters in Tom’s life so well developed, there is a lot of experience for everyone to relate to.  This is a story where most everyone should feel as though they know what Tom is experiencing as his trials are those that most experience at some point in life in one form or another.  I recommend Domestic Violets to all readers.

About the Author:

Matthew Norman is an advertising copywriter. He lives with his wife and daughter in Baltimore. Domestic Violets is his first novel.

To learn more about Matthew Norman, please visit his blog at: www.thenormannation.com

For more reviews of the book, please follow the TLC Book Tour.

I received an arc of Domestic Violets by Matthew Norman from TLC Book Tours to be a part of this tour and offer my honest review of the book. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned book.

Filed Under: Book Review, Book Tour Tagged With: , ,

Book Review: The Book of Lies by Mary Horlock

Thursday 28 July, 2011 By 16 Comments

Title: The Book of Lies
Author: Mary Horlock
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Publication Date: July 19, 2011
Paperback: 368 pages
ISBN: 978-0062065094
Genre: Fiction

From the back of cover:

Life on the tiny island of Guernsey has just become a whole lot harder for fifteen-year-old Cat Rozier. She’s gone from model pupil to murderer, but she swears it’s not her fault. Apparently it’s all the fault of history.

A new arrival at Cat’s high school in 1984, the beautiful and instantly popular Nicolette inexplicably takes Cat under her wing. The two become inseparable—going to parties together, checking out boys, and drinking whatever liquor they can shoplift. But a perceived betrayal sends them spinning apart, and Nic responds with cruel, over-the-top retribution.

Cat’s recently deceased father, Emile, dedicated his adult life to uncovering the truth about the Nazi occupation of Guernsey—from Churchill’s abandonment of the island to the stories of those who resisted—in hopes of repairing the reputation of his older brother, Charlie. Through Emile’s letters and Charlie’s words—recorded on tapes before his own death—a “confession” takes shape, revealing the secrets deeply woven into the fabric of the island . . . and into the Rozier family story.

My Review:

The Book of Lies by Mary Horlock is an interesting story of Cat Rozier, a 16-year-old murderer, living on the island of Guernsey whose life was previously upended by a new student, Nicolette, who moved to the island and exerted a strong influence, and not in a positive sense, on young Cat.  Horlock crafts an intriguing storyline centered about the events that lead to murder on the island, and her approach, using alternating voices from Cat and Charlie, her late uncle, through his recordings was very unique and had potential to really connect the historical perspective to the present day events. I went into this novel really wanting to like it but only parts of it clicked for me.  I truly enjoyed the historical accounts of the uncle, but the switching between prose and written accounts got a little too mundane and just did not have the kind of transitions one would wish to have in this mode of perspective switching.  Being her debut novel, I think Mary Horlock has gotten off to a good start, just not a start that I particularly enjoyed and while this book was not for me, I encourage readers of my review to check out other opinions on the tour for The Book of Lies.  With that being said, I do look forward to reading Horlock’s next book.

About the Author:

Mary Horlock is an authority on contemporary art who has worked at the Tate Britain and Tate Liverpool, and curated the Turner Prize for contemporary art. She spent her childhood in Guernsey, and lives in London.

For more reviews of the book, please follow the TLC Book Tour.

I received a copy of The Book of Lies by Mary Horlock from TLC Book Tours to be a part of this tour and offer my honest review of the book. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned book.

Filed Under: Book Review, Book Tour Tagged With: ,

Book Review: Everything Beautiful Began After by Simon Van Booy

Wednesday 13 July, 2011 By 10 Comments

Title: Everything Beautiful Began After
Author: Simon Van Booy
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Publication Date: July 5, 2011
Paperback: 416 pages
ISBN: 978-0061661488
Genre: Fiction

From the Publisher:

Rebecca is young, lost, and beautiful. A gifted artist, she seeks solace and inspiration in the Mediterranean heat of Athens—trying to understand who she is and how she can love without fear.

George has come to Athens to learn ancient languages after growing up in New England boarding schools and Ivy League colleges. He has no close relationships with anyone and spends his days hunched over books or wandering the city in a drunken stupor.

Henry is in Athens to dig. An accomplished young archaeologist, he devotedly uncovers the city’s past as a way to escape his own, which holds a secret that not even his doting parents can talk about.

…And then, with a series of chance meetings, Rebecca, George, and Henry are suddenly in flight, their lives brighter and clearer than ever, as they fall headlong into a summer that will forever define them in the decades to come.

My Review:

Everything Beautiful Began After by Simon Van Booy is a remarkable story about love, sympathy, and the search for truth. Van Booy crafts a captivating story, set in Athens, of Rebecca, who seeks to find her person within, of George, who is a bit of an intellectual yet carries with him a vice or two, and of Henry, who has one important, yet very deep secret that holds him back from expressing truth in his feelings. Readers will get to know these characters well by means of observation through the author’s prose. Van Booy lets readers get to know his characters by their actions and dialogue as opposed to direct character descriptions. I found this approach to be a refreshing change and a rather unique attribute to Van Booy’s style in this novel. The summer in which these three characters meet up, that is, the “after” from which everything beautiful began sets the stage for how each character develops friendships with the other two during this chance encounter. Van Booy’s stylish writing is what made this book so intriguing to me and I think book discussion groups looking for topics about failure, secrets, loss, and the understanding that comes from acceptance of the past will find Everything Beautiful Began After to be an excellent choice.

About the Author:

Simon Van Booy grew up in rural Wales. He is the author of The Secret Lives of People in Love and Love Begins in Winter, which won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. He is the editor of three philosophy books, titled Why We Fight, Why We Need Love, and Why Our Decisions Don’t Matter, and his essays have appeared in the New York Times, The Daily Telegraph, and The Guardian, and on NPR. He lives in New York City, where he teaches at the School of Visual Arts and is involved in the Rutgers Early College Humanities program for young adults living in underserved communities. He was a finalist for the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise, and his work has been translated into thirteen different languages.

To learn more about author Simon Van Booy, please visit his website.

For more reviews of the book, please follow the TLC Book Tour.

I received a copy of Everything Beautiful Began After by Simon Van Booy from TLC Book Tours to be a part of this tour and offer my honest review of the book. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned book.

Filed Under: Book Review, Book Tour Tagged With: ,

Book Review: Hello Goodbye by Emily Chenoweth

Wednesday 29 June, 2011 By 6 Comments


Title: Hello Goodbye
Author: Emily Chenoweth
Publisher: Harper Perennial; Reprint edition
Publication Date: June 14, 2011
Paperback: 304 pages
ISBN: 978-0062034601
Genre: Fiction

From the Publisher:

In the summer after her freshman year of college, Abby Hansen embarks on what might be a final vacation with her parents to a historic resort in northern New Hampshire. The Presidential Hotel, with its stately rooms and old-fashioned dress code, seems almost unbearably stuffy to Abby, but the young, free-spirited hotel staff offers her the chance for new friendships, and maybe even romance.

However, for her parents, Elliott and Helen, their time spent together in the shadow of the White Mountains has taken on a deeper meaning. By inviting family friends to join them, they open their marriage up to a lifetime of confessions, and they must confront a secret about Helen’s health that they have been hiding from their daughter.

Heartbreaking and luminous, Hello Goodbye deftly explores a family’s struggle with love and loss, as a summer vacation becomes an occasion for awakening.

My Review:

Hello Goodbye by Emily Chenoweth is a touching novel about the frailty of life, relationships, love, death and dying and is definitely a story that explores a range of emotions.  Chenoweth has crafted in masterful fashion the story of Helen Hansen, wife to Elliott and mother to Abby, a woman who in her mid-forties has been diagnosed with a serious and deadly health condition.  Readers will experience the family drama and confessions of the couple to their daughter through various perspectives, a writing style that can oftentimes be challenging to execute successfully, yet Chenoweth deftly handles the changes in focus.  Helen and Elliott appear to have lead a happy marriage throughout their twenty years together, yet Chenoweth reveals through the revelations within the family, along with a small  subset of extended family that this happiness may have been masking untold secrets.  Amidst these confessions, readers experience the couple’s grief and heartache painted alongside their daughter’s exploration of her sexuality, showing the literary skill by which Chenoweth makes beautiful contrasts between the end of life for one and a child’s birth into adulthood as the blossoming of another life.  Chenoweth has written a very emotional novel with so many feelings expressed through the characters that readers will want to discuss with others some of the implicit questions brought forth by this realistic, yet mainly fictionalized story.  Hello Goodbye would make for a fabulous discussion group choice and I would recommend this book to all readers looking for a well-written, wide-ranging emotional family drama.

About the Author:

Emily Chenoweth is a former fiction editor of Publishers Weekly. Her work has appeared in Tin House, Bookforum, and People, among other publications. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

For more reviews of the book, please follow the TLC book tour.

I received an arc of Hello Goodbye by Emily Chenoweth from TLC Book Tours to be a part of this tour and offer my honest review of the book. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned book.

Filed Under: Book Review, Book Tour Tagged With: ,

Teaser Tuesdays- My Teaser is from Hello Goodbye

Tuesday 28 June, 2011 By 52 Comments

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

  • Grab your current read
  • Open to a random page
  • Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
  • BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
  • Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

    “She’d had high-dose chemotherapy and a course or two of radiation, all while Abby was away at school, and now, during a brief pause in the treatment-time off for good behavior, Elliott joked-they were taking a vacation.  Abby, who wanted her mother to rest up for the next therapeutic onslaught, had been against the idea, but she’d discovered that her opinion counted less than it used to.”

    Page 7, Hello Goodbye by Emily Chenoweth

Filed Under: Teaser Tuesdays Tagged With: ,

Book Review: The London Train by Tessa Hadley

Monday 20 June, 2011 By 6 Comments


Title: The London Train
Author: Tessa Hadley
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Publication Date: May 24, 2011
Paperback: 352 pages
ISBN: 978-0062011831
Genre: Fiction, Mystery

From the Publisher:

Unsettled by the recent death of his mother, Paul sets out in search of Pia, his daughter from his first marriage, who has disappeared into the labyrinth of London. Discovering her pregnant and living illegally in a run-down council flat with a pair of Polish siblings, Paul is entranced by Pia’s excitement at living on the edge. Abandoning his second wife and their children in Wales, he joins her to begin a new life in the heart of London.

Cora, meanwhile, is running in the opposite direction, back to Cardiff, to the house she has inherited from her parents. She is escaping her marriage, and the constrictions and disappointments of her life in London. But there is a deeper reason why she cannot stay with her decent Civil Service husband—the aftershocks of which she hasn’t fully come to terms with herself.

Connecting both stories is the London train, and a chance meeting that will have immediate and far-reaching consequences for both Paul and Cora.

My Review:

The London Train by Tessa Hadley is a masterfully crafted work of literary genius, giving fiction fans a reason to pick up this latest novel from Hadley.  In this story, readers learn separately about the lives of Paul and Cora, two middle-aged people at not so particularly happy points in their respective lives, each with failed and/or failing relationships at crossroads both in relationships and careers.  When Paul and Cora do cross paths during their journeys, readers will see how these two seemingly unrelated, disconnected characters discover deep, interwoven threads, that they share.  Hadley has a knack for character description that truly gives the sense of knowing who Cora and Paul are.  This is a beautifully-written novel about romance and chance encounters and it is appropriate to comment that this story made a wonderful read because of the writing, for the story is not one of major events, life-changing catastrophes or intricate plot twists.  Hadley, in her work of The London Train, is simply a talented writer who captivates through her story-telling.  The London Train would make for an excellent choice for book discussion groups and I would recommend it to readers seeking a very well-crafted story about love and life.

About the Author:

Tessa Hadley is the author of The Master Bedroom, Sunstroke and Other Stories, Everything Will Be All Right, and Accidents in the Home. Sunstroke and Other Stories was a New York Times Notable Book of 2007, and Accidents in the Home was long-listed for The Guardian’s First Book Award. Her short stories appear regularly in The New Yorker. She lives in Cardiff, Wales, and teaches literature and creative writing at Bath Spa University.

For more reviews of the book, please follow the book tour.

I received an copy of The London Train by Tessa Hadley from TLC Book Tours to be a part of this tour and offer my honest review of the book. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned book.

Filed Under: Book Review, Book Tour Tagged With: ,
« Older Posts