I’ve been reading Roddy Doyle for several decades now. That’s kind of nice. He and I have grown up and begun to grow old together. For the past few years he has been writing little scenes for Facebook, sponsored by Guinness. These are just the “good parts,” the dialogue Mr. Doyle writes so well. Funny vignettes featuring two blokes in a bar yammering about something … Continue reading Smile by Roddy Doyle
The story opens with a corpse. A soldier’s body being prepared for burial in the then frontier state of Missouri circa 1855. So I should not have been surprised by how violent the rest of the book was. But I had never really considered just how much violence was involved in the beginning years of the United States. Not systematically. And I had just finished … Continue reading My New Favorite Book: Days Without End by Sebastian Barry
I did not expect The Midnight Choir to end up being my new favorite book. It’s a very well written crime novel. Entertaining. Strong characters. Interesting plot. Borderline pager turner. But it wasn’t until towards the end when everything came together in a single shocking revelation that both linked and undermined all of the books multiple plot lines that The Midnight Choir became my new favorite book. … Continue reading My New Favorite Book: The Midnight Choir by Gene Kerrigan
Roddy Doyle is one of a handful of authors who consistently make me laugh out loud. I don’t think I’m a particularly gloomy person, I just don’t often find the experience of reading laugh-out-loud funny. Roddy Doyle’s Barrytown novels are an exception. Like The Van and The Snapper, The Commitments is a very funny book. The Commitments is the story of a group of friends … Continue reading The Commitments by Roddy Doyle
Benjamin Black, Booker Prize winning author who is really John Banville, started strong with his first detective novel Christine Falls. I think we all had high hopes for him, those of us who enjoy detective novels. His second book, The Silver Swan, didn’t quite measure up to the high standard Christine Falls set but we were willing to forgive– a sophomore slump is not an uncommon thing. But The Lemur … Continue reading The Worst Book I’ve Read in a Long Time or The Lemur by Benjamin Black
When a mystery novel opens with the discovery of a dead body, it has my full attention. Avoid the eccentric neighbor characters and get right to the chase. Benjamin Black, John Banville to the Mann Booker Prize jury, opens The Silver Swan just the way I like it. A young man drops by the Dublin morgue to ask pathologist Garret Quirke not to perform an … Continue reading The Silver Swan by Benjamin Black
May Contain Spoilers 