Author: Nevil Shute

I’ve read this book before but my latest reading was a long time ago. The picture I had in my mind was of a man, in silhouette, sitting alone and watching a sunset over a body of water. I’m not sure where that image came from because there is no such moment in the book. As far as I remember there was no cover on the book on Mum and Dad’s shelf, and the book I picked up from a library sale also came without a cover.

Regardless of what I remember, I loved the book again! The conversation between the characters is perhaps a bit dated but it didn’t take away from the story. The story is dismal – the Northern Hemisphere has been wiped out in a nuclear war and the radiation is spreading around the globe. I can’t imagine as orderly an end as the characters portrayed in the book manage. They seemed rather philosophical in that everyone dies sometime but they just happened to know when it would happen.

Yes Stacia, the book stands up to the test of time!

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Author: Saroo Brierley

I knew the movie based on this book was coming and I was happy that the library had it on their shelves. I finished it the night before we saw the film.

The book is a well-told story of the journey of an Australian man looking to find the family that was “lost” in India. It took 25 years but he finally found the town he lived in and, surprisingly, his mother lived only a short distance away from the original home. She said she never moved in case her son came back.

As a five-year old boy Saroo tagged along with his older brother as he went out in search of work to provide for the family. Saroo falls asleep in an empty train car and wakes up 16,000 miles away in Calcutta. For two months he barely manages to survive on the streets before being taken first to a detention centre, then an orphanage and finally to Australia where he was adopted by loving parent.

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Author: JB Rowley

I read this on my iPad (Kindle version) during breaks between movies at the film festival.

It is well-written and the story is quite interesting. After the death of her mother, the author found birth certificates belonging to three other children. She tracks down her mother’s history and imagines the story she might have told.

I’m looking forward to reading the second book in this memoir series – about the lives of the other three children.

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Author: Ann-Marie MacDonald

I really wanted to like this book – the author is Canadian and I enjoyed her previous books (I remember the titles although I couldn’t find any reviews).

The main character, Mary-Rose or Mister, is a mother of two small children. The book switches back and forth from her point of view as a child, her mother’s point of view following Mary-Rose’s birth, and various points in the timeline of Mary-Rose herself. As Mary-Rose struggles to deal with her domestic life a “cured” childhood ailment seems to reoccur and she is forced to deal with family issues and speculations.

I keep thinking maybe I missed something and that is why I didn’t “get” it.

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