vendredi 4 mars 2016

NEW BOOKS MARCH 2016


FOAL BOOK ORDER MARCH 2016

NON FICTION

The Outsider : My life in intrigue                                      Frederick Forsyth

By the author of The Day of the Jackal, the story of a happy boy who wanted an adventurous life and got it

Stop the Clocks ** see poem below                                   Joan Bakewell

A memoir  which is not Bakewell’s goodbye. She isn’t ill; hopefully, she has more time yet. But it is, perhaps, a preparation for goodbye, being a kind of reckoning up, a wry analysis of the world she will leave behind

Gimson’s Kings and Queens                                                          Andrew Gimson

An entertaining romp through England’s monarchs

How the French think : an affectionate portrait of an intellectual people by   Sudhir Hasareesingh

In this nation of arrogant intellectuals, even the beggars make eloquent speeches – but why are the French like this ? Why do they think differently ? The French like to construct a theory and then use it to explain facts ; the British and others like to examine the facts and then construct theories.

FICTION

The Man without a shadow                                                           Joyce Carol Oates

Psychological thriller, a meloncholic examination of the ways in which we define ourselves in terms of our work and relationships.

The Improbability of Love                                                 Hannah Rothschild

A novel set in the art world. « I don’t know why everyone doesn’t set their novel in the art world » Ms Rothschild said. « It’s got everything : extremes of wealth, goodies, baddies, the intangibility of beauty and desire, history, scholorship.. you name it »

The Neopolitan Novels                                                        Elsa Ferrante (4 volumes)

The series follows the lives of two perceptive and intelligent girls, Elena Greco and Raffaella Cerullo, from childhood to adulthood as they try to create lives for themselves amidst the violent and stultifying culture of their home– a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples

Exposure                                                                              Helen Dunmore

A fine addition to the shelves of cold war literature, an unconventional spy thriller

Numero Zero                                                                       Umberto Eco

This wry, witty novel about the skulduggery of the Clean Hands scandal

The Noise of Time                                                               Julian Barnes

A fictional biography, Barnes gives himself the narratorial freedom to enter the workings of the composer’s (Shostakovich) mind while also offering outside context for the reader.

Blood, Salt, Water                                                               Denise Mina

Her 12th book and Denise Mina is showing no signs of losing her power to draw readers into a shadowy world of crime.

Rogue Lawyer                                                                     John Grisham

Grisham is debuting what looks to be a series featuring a so-called street lawyer named Sebastian Rudd. Rogue Laywer is so cleverly plotted, it could be used as a how-to manual in fiction-writing courses

The Moor’s Account                                                                       Laila Lalami

Long listed for the Man Booker 2015 The story of an ill-fated expedition to the New World which sets of in 1527. The reader is gripped as the expedition lurches from disaster to disaster

High Dive                                                                             Jonathan Lee

A hauntingly atmospheric tale of the 1980s. A Provisional IRA bomb explodes in the Grand Hotel, Brighton, as it hosted senior delegates at the Tory party conference. This shocking event becomes the focus of Jonathan Lee’s third novel, though its surprises are truly unexpected

Broken Harbour                                                                 Tana French

A tale about the different facets of obsession and insanity. Tana French is a very popular author at the moment

**The  title of Joan Bakewell’s memoir probably comes from the first line of a W H Auden poem which I find very moving and which was recited in the burial scene in 4 Weddings and a Funeral


Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled  drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

 

 

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