This month I have a couple of new books that have just been published. Kate Grenville’s latest novel Room Made of Leaves, her first new novel in a decade. Kate brings Elizabeth Macarthur, wife of John Macarthur, the father of the Australian Merino sheep, to life as a person in her own right. I am sure if you are a reader of Grenville this will be enjoyed. Also just out, The Survivors, a new Jane Harper read. A reckless mistake has devasting consequences. I have enjoyed her previous books enormously. Highly recommended during conversations with friends are The Things She Owned written by Katherine Tamiko Arguila, the complexity of lives lived between cultures. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, a work of historical fiction, Count Alexander Llyich, a Russian aristocrat used to `the good life’ is sentenced by a Bolshevik tribunal in 1922 to a life of house arrest in the luxurious Metropol Hotel in Moscow (a hotel that still exists today). A beautifully written and very descriptive book, most enjoyable.
Too Close to the Falls by Catherine Gildiner. An amazing and very humorous memoir about Catherine’s extraordinary childhood in a small American town situated near Niagara Falls in the 1950’s. A lovely encapsulation of the life and times of that era in small town America.
I really enjoyed a book from the library The Liberation of Brigid Dunne by Patricia Scanlan, set in Ireland, about two members of a family who entered the convent. At the moment I am reading Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. It is getting a bit better the more I read. Nevertheless, keep reading and I hope some of these books find their way into your living rooms.
Geraldine McCorkell