Three more

Three more books to add to the new arrivals pile, three more books with very striking, attractive covers.

    The Blue Fox by Sjon has the distinction of comments by both Bjork and A.S. Byatt on its cover! "A magical novel", states the former, while the latter says it is "comic and lyrical", but I was taken by ReadySteadyBook's remark: "the literary equivalent of a snowflake".
    Set against the Icelandic winter landscape in 1883, this book follows a priest on his hunt for the blue fox, a naturalist, Fridrik, and his charge, Abba, who has Down's Syndrome. "The fates of all these characters are intrinsically bound, and gradually, surprisingly unravelled in this spellbinding fable that is part mystery, part fairy tale".

    

     Click on the picture there to enlarge it so that you can read the names on the colour chart - a witty touch before we even get to the first page of the cleverly-titled Designs for a Happy Home, a novel "in ten interiors" by Matthew Reynolds.
This is "the sparkling story of a sometimes impossible, often infuriating but ultimately loveable heroine whose pilgrim's progress through modern marriage is at once funny, poignant and unforgettable".
    It looks as though it is going to be very original and fresh and fun, and probably extremely sharp too. More on it soon.

     Another novel in translation, this one by the Japanese writer Yoko Ogawa, and with a very interesting premise: "He is a brilliant maths professor with a peculiar problem - ever since a traumatic head injury... he has lived with only eighty minutes of short-term memory. She is a sensitive but astute young housekeeper ...who is entrusted to take care of him".
 The Housekeeper and the Professor is "an enchanting story about what it means to live in the present, and about the curious equations that can create a family where one did not exist before".
Intrigued? I am.

Comments

[Dark Puss]

I gave a copy of The Blue Fox to Tanya as a "Buy a Friend a Book" present last autumn. She loved it, but I think it may be a book that rather polarises opinions.