Author: David Bergen

I picked this book off the shelf at the Library because I had read his previous novel, The Time in Between. I don’t remember the storyline of that book, and even though I looked it up online the review didn’t spark my memory at all (perhaps I’ll have to read it again).

In this novel, Iso is a young Guatemalan woman who works in a fertility clinic in the highlands. When an affair with an American doctor leads to her pregnancy she hopes they will have a happy life together. But when the doctor is in an accident and has a devastating brain injury she realizes this won’t be possible. When her child is born the wife of the doctor takes the baby, without consent, to America.

The story tells of Iso’s struggle to regain custody of her child.

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Author: Riel Nason

I picked this book up off the library shelf mainly because it was Canadian and had won the Commonwealth Book Prize in Canada and Europe.

I enjoyed the story of Violet, who is in charge of The Purple Barn antique shop while her parents are searching for Bliss, her older brother. The story delves into their happy childhood and the sudden turn that happiness takes as Bliss struggles with bouts of depression. The search for and sale of antiques is interesting and there are quilts for sale in their shop (the author just happens to also be a quilter). There is a surprise twist at the end of the story – one that I didn’t see coming and might easily have missed.

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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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