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THE CIDER HOUSE RULES & A WIDOW FOR ONE YEAR
Reading a John Irving is like riding a roller coaster: you are constantly being challenged - you either hate or love it. I was familiar with Irving (having read his Hotel New Hampshire & Widow for a Year) and simply loved Cider House Rules!
Why? I found the main characters very likeable and was thus captured by the story: What's going to happen to them?! At times, I was so excited I found it hard to breath, feeling trapped in the story with these imaginery people whose destiny mattered to me.
Yes, there is a lot to think about, too: Live and let live (abortion,adoption, disabilities and lots and lots of human relationships).
And for me it became true what Irving once said about his novels: The reader doesn't want to know how his novel end, but wants them to never end.
THE RUSSIA HOUSE
"LeCarre presents a work that is both a spy story and an anti-spy story that affects the lives of the three main characters: Bluebird, Katya, and Barley Blair."
Barley Blair, a British publisher, is given a manuscript by the authorities who find him drunk in a pub. He's asked to go to Russia to contact a man named Goethe, a Russian physicist who wants the manuscript published. After threats by the British intelligence community and the CIA, he agrees to be the middleman. His love for a Russian women, Katya, who is the intermediary between himself and Goethe, leads Barley to despair...changing the tone and complexity of the story. As the Russians get wind of the situation, Barely plays into their hands in order save the life of his love object, Katya and her children. His handlers are confused at their joe's behavior. The CIA takes over the operation in order to handle Barely personally. Nobody is able to handle Barley, even after a lie detector test reveals his thoughts and allegiance as truthful beyond a shadow of doubt. But doubts are only the beginning of Barely's deceptions that makes this thriller one that can't be put down easily.
TSUGUMI
Originally published in Japan in 1989, popular international author Banana Yoshimoto's GOODBYE TSUGUMI is the tale of a pair of teenage cousins, Maria Shirakawa and Tsugumi Yamamoto, and the final summer they spend together in the sleepy Japanese coastal village where they were raised. Although narrated by Maria, the novel mainly centers on Tsugumi, an extremely unpleasant and very fragile young woman who spends half her time in bed or hospitalized and who does her best to make the lives of those around her as unbearable as possible.
Ann Rice
INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE
This is the story of Louis, as told in his own words, of his journey through mortal and immortal life. Louis recounts how he became a vampire at the hands of the radiant and sinister Lestat and how he became indoctrinated, unwillingly, into the vampire way of life. His story ebbs and flows through the streets of New Orleans, defining crucial moments such as his discovery of the exquisite lost young child Claudia, wanting not to hurt but to comfort her with the last breaths of humanity he has inside. Yet, he makes Claudia a vampire, trapping her womanly passion, will, and intelligence inside the body of a small child. Louis and Claudia form a seemingly unbreakable alliance and even "settle down" for a while in the opulent French Quarter. Louis remembers Claudia's struggle to understand herself and the hatred they both have for Lestat that sends them halfway across the world to seek others of their kind. Louis and Claudia are desperate to find somewhere they belong, to find others who understand, and someone who knows why and what they are.
Louis and Claudia travel across Europe, eventually coming to Paris and the ragingly successful Theatre des Vampires--a theatre of vampires pretending to be mortals pretending to be vampires. Here they meet the magnetic and ethereal Armand, who brings them into a whole society of vampires. But Louis and Claudia find that finding others like themselves provides no easy answers and, in fact, presents dangers they scarcely imagined.
Originally begun as a short story, the book took off as Anne wrote it, spinning the tragic and triumphant life experiences of a soul. As well as the struggles of its characters, Interview with the Vampire captures the political and social changes of two continents. The novel also introduces Lestat, Anne's most enduring character, a heady mixture of attraction and revulsion. The book, full of lush description, centers on the themes of immortality, change, loss, sexuality, and power.
Interesting Fact:
The original manuscript for Interview with the Vampire was quite different than the final published version. After the rights had been sold to Knopf, Anne rewrote the book, adding the entire Theater of the Vampires section and bringing Lestat back after his supposed death by fire.
review taken from Anne Rice Page
MISS SMILLA'S FEELING FOR SNOW
This murder mystery/thriller takes place between Denmark and Greenland. Six year old Isaiah leaps to his death from the roof of the apartment building in which he lives with his mother. Smilla Jaspersen, who lives in the same building and has come to love the little boy as her own, does not believe Isaiah would go willingly on the roof as he's very afraid of heights. Although there is only one set of footprints on the roof, she still suspects foul play as supported by her "reading" of the footprints. Her investigations begin in Copenhagen, but eventually lead to an adventure on an ice breaking ship and then to an island in the northern part of Greenland and a very surprising, almost sci-fi ending. The motive of her initial investigation lies in the kindred spirit she shares with Isaiah, both having been born in Greenland and then brought to Copenhagen after a parent died. But as she learns more, the more intent she is to find the real answer behind this boy's death.
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