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Dave in '60’s England starts with three strikes against him: his absent Burmese father, his lower-middle class status, and his gay sexual orientation. But he’s very bright and an influential family sponsors his high-class education. Their son, Giles, bullies him unrelentingly at the boarding school they both attend and later turns into a powerful conservative politician. His mother, a seamstress, connects with a rich client who sponsors her successful dress shop; their partnership is closeted but enduring. Dave becomes an actor, has relationships that eventually founder, but finally makes a solid marriage with Richard. We follow his story up to the present day: his miseries, his successes, and those moments of grace as referred to in the title when he was invited to listen to classical music with a teacher at the school in which he felt so less than. I appreciate how Hollinghurst offers nuanced insight into racism, homophobia, and class as played out in one person’s multifaceted life.
Young Cordelia’s life is severely circumscribed by her sorceress mother’s manipulative demands. The worst is an obedience spell in which she must do as commanded and is helpless to resist. The sorceress will do whatever she needs to get what she wants—a rich protector. Like the chariot she seized after turning its owner into a crazed ax murderer; he happened to be the father of Cordelia’s only friend. Luckily her mother’s intended, a squire, has a canny sister who knows sorcery and helps Cordelia thwart her mother’s heinous plans. Action takes bizarre turns, like the malevolent enchanted horse who still careens around after being beheaded. There’s lots of imaginative fun in this tale of combating evil incarnate.
The City and Its Uncertain WallsThis tour de force of magic realism could be subtitled The Uncertain Walls Between the Heart, the Soul, and the Shadow. A teenage boy, in love with a girl, will follow her anywhere. That’s how he ends up in said city, severed from his shadow and working in the library where he’s the dream-reader. No books here, just egg-shaped containers of old dreams. He manages to escape when he realizes how much he could lose by staying, and after a time ends up working in another library in the mountains. There he replaces the head librarian, now a communicative ghost. So many details—they go on and on—that sound utterly absurd, but Murakami manages to ground them with such sensory detail and straightforward telling that I accepted them wholeheartedly. Brilliant!
The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife
A bizarre coincidence brings old Fred, who's just been evicted, to the riverbank where old Bernard, in a wheelchair, has just expired. He tries to help but Bernard's body tumbles into the river. The nursing home attendants hoist exhausted Fred back into the wheelchair; the two men bear an uncanny resemblance to each other. One big difference: Bernard was a first-class grump and Fred has a generous soul and a way with demented nursing home denizens. I had to suspend disbelief but really loved the way the book played out to give the characters what they needed. (Would that life...) The author, Australian, has worked in geriatric care and knows whereof she speaks.
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