stapsreads

I picked this book up from the OBCZ at the Camel and Artichoke with the express intention of reading it and putting it into the Asia bookbox. So I did just that. It is set largely in Sri Lanka (or Ceylon, as it was at the time this book begins), from the seventies through to 2005, and follows the fortunes of one family, focusing largely on Alice, the granddaughter. While the Fonsekas, Alice's maternal family, are Singhalese, her father is Tamil, and the mixed marriage causes tensions, to say the least. The narrative follows Alice as she moves to London with her parents and grows up to become an artist.

Most memorable about this book is the gorgeously vivid description, particularly of the landscapes of Sri Lanka. Roma Tearne is an artist as well as an author, and it shows not only in the sympathy with which she portrays Alice's experience, but also in the colourful imagery.

I was a little troubled by the way the book is framed (at the beginning and end) in white male experience, and do not feel that it would have lost much without the most part of the prologue and the epilogue. I was much more interested in Alice's career as an artist than I was in what men thought of her, and would have liked to see more of this.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/9772189

Nancy Mitford on top form. I'm not sure that I have actually read much, if any, Nancy Mitford before, but this was just as much fun as I thought it was going to be - impressive, given how depressing it could have been, what with failed marriages all over the place and then the Second World War. A gorgeous froth of fun with a satisfyingly acid edge to it, and a lovely ambiguous ending. And, my goodness, nobody does class like Nancy Mitford.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/10262594

Another surprise in the ABC roundabout. It's certainly widening my horizons; this is a contender (though how serious a contender I'm not sure) for the Great American Novel. Set in the early 1950s, it documents a teenager's battle to a) get through university despite his father's paranoia; and b) avoid the Korean War. If that sounds thoroughly depressing, it's because it is. I could appreciate it as a competent and convincing piece of writing, but I will probably never read it again. I think it's partly because I'm feeling guilty about not liking the narrator much...

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/10203481/

Immigration in Britain in the late 40s. I chose this from a bookbox that was going around last year, despite misgivings that it might turn out to be one of those terribly twee wartime love stories à la Joan Jonker or Gilda O'Neill. Happily (for me), it was nothing of the sort.

1948. Queenie Bligh's husband has disappeared, and she is taking in lodgers. These include Gilbert Joseph and his wife Hortense, recently moved to London from Jamaica. Gilbert has previously been in England, having volunteered for the RAF during the war. Hortense has not.

Levy traces all four back-stories, exposing in the process four rounded characters, not always likeable, but very human.

A sensitive exploration of an under-explored theme, with a satisfyingly bittersweet ending.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/8097181