A Change in Altitude by Anita Shreve

Margaret and Patrick have been married just a few months when they set off on what they hope will be a great adventure-a year living in Kenya. While Patrick practices equatorial medicine,Margaret works as a photojournalist, capturing a dizzying and sometimes dangerous multicultural city on film. Shuttling between tony expatriate suburbs and squalid shantytowns, Margaret quickly realizes there is a great deal she doesn't know about the complex mores of her new home, and about her own husband.

With stunning language and striking emotional intensity, Anita Shreve transports us to the exotic panoramas of Africa and into the core of our most intimate relationships.

Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif

Dear Husband by Joyce Carol Oates

I have discovered a wonderful author because of our book club this month. The book was Dear Husband. A book of short stories. The author is Joyce Carol Oates. I found her writing candid and engaging. Will not be everyone's cup of tea, as she is dramatic and often provocative. The story Dear Husband I found unsettling, such a cry for help, that went unheeded.Written with compassion.

In my opinion she is a brave writer who challenges our beliefs or mis beliefs.

Joyce from Friday Girls

Check out the other titles by this author we hold in the library by going on to our catalogue. We have 17 of her titles. Lee

Our Reader's Recommendations

This is a new section of our blog where you, the reader can recommend titles. I hope it will be a little bit like "If you liked this book then try this one". Another way for us to help and encourage each other in our reading choices. Feel free anytime to add to our lists. Lee

Judith from our Non conformists book club has just read this book (published this year ) and thought it was great. Thoroughly recommend this book 5/5.
"The Perfect Mother" by Margaret Leroy

Judith would like to recommend another great read in
"We Need To Talk About Kevin" by Lionel Shriver

First, I would have to say it is not the typical American female's bemoaning her lot.
It is well written, the climax horrifying and unexpected.
Only find some reservations in the character of Kevin. He seems too overblown and too lacking in ambivalence. That said I haven't known too many psychopaths! Lionel Shriver says she didn't delve into finding out specifically about people who have committed such crimes and, she has not had children. As a story it is totally gripping, still leaving me with this amazement that Americans still "don't seem to get it" with violent crime ( particularly school attacks, the cases cited were astounding!)A horrible story, a good book. I'd have to give it 5/5 despite my reservations!

Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh

Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies,the first volume in his "Ibis Trilogy", revisits in new, breathtakingly detailed and compelling ways some of the concerns in his earlier novels. Among these are the incessant movements of the peoples, commerce and empires which have traversed the Indian Ocean since antiquity; and the lives of men and women with little power, whose stories, framed against the grand naratives of history, invite other ways of thinking about the past, culture and identity. The Independent Review

The Messenger - Markus Zusak

Last year we read Markus Zusak "The Book Thief" in our book club and I loved it. The Messenger is a very different book in style and subject matter. It is meant for teenages 16+ and I am nearly seventy so therefore approached the book with a certain reservation. However after a couple of pages I was hooked. The language style is sparse and strangely poetic and just pulls you into the action. The main character Ed Kennedy, is likable yet his life lacks any direction. And then things start mysteriously to change. He receives in the mail a playing card with a message - three addresses of people needing help. The message of the book is, that by helping others and becoming involved in their lives, one can change one's own life too. The messenger becomes the message - if a no-hoper like Ed can change and find a meaning in his life, anybody can. The only problem I had with this book was the ending. I was of course curious who was behind the messages Ed was following all through the book. The conclusion was rather confusing, rewriting some of the previous story. This however didnt spoil my enjoyment of "The Messenger" and I could imagine that lots of teenagers (and seventy year olds!) will find inspiration in this wonderful book. Cheers Tanya

Tanya - Friday Girls

Markus Zusak is rapidly becoming my favourite author. Can't wait until "Bridge of Clay" which is due to be released September 2010. Really can recommend listening to the audio of "The Messenger" if you have teenages and are going on a road trip. Tony, Huon and my four hour trip in the car wasnt long enough for us to listen to the whole book but it sure was a pleasant way of spending the time. Hope you love it as well .

Lee Croucher

The Year of Magical Thinking

Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage–and a life, in good times and bad–that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child. Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later–the night before New Year’s Eve–the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma. This powerful book is Didion’s attempt to make sense of the “weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness . . . about marriage and children and memory . . . about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself.”
Joyce said........
The Year of Magical Thinking was to me a truthful account of a womens greif at the loss af her husband to a sudden fatal heart attach,which she witnessed.Her grief was made worse by the life threatening illness of her daughter at the same time.Such a lot for one person to endure.
She came across as cold and distant, but who knows how anyone would react to such tragic loss.She had certainly lived a charmed life and as a result saw things in a different way. What resonated with me was when her husband said "For once in your life can you try not to always be right" her reply "does he realise in my head I am never right"
A very enjoyable book