Slim volumes

 

    Here's my reading over the next week or so, four slim volumes beginning with Jonathan Lee's Who is Mr Satoshi? - a "uniquely inventive story" combining several interlocking mysteries which span a sixty year period, all set in train by a package addressed to a Mr. Satoshi found by reclusive photographer Rob Fossick among his mother's possessions on the day she dies. So begins a quest ...

   "A triptych of beautifully crafted novellas make up Anita Desai's exquisite new book" The Artist of Disappearance. Set in modern India, the stories "move beyond the cities to places still haunted by the past, and to characters who are [...] masters of self-effacement." I've not read Anita Desai before and I'm particularly looking forward to this book.

    Next comes The Cold Eye of Heaven by Christine Dwyer Hickey, a story of Dublin and of a Dubliner, Farley, who has lived in the city all his seventy five years. Collapsed and barely able to move one snowy day, Farley's mind begins to rove and he recalls his past in this novel which is "epic in scope, rich in detail and shot through with black humour".

    Lastly, The Forgotten Affairs of Youth by Alexander McCall Smith, and though I've yet to read this, a quick flick through is enough for me to be able to commend Isabel Dalhousie's choice of professional advisers, especially the practitioner of "the dark arts" who first appears in the middle of chapter 5; he is not unknown to me...

Comments

[Mystica]

The four books are all new to me. The Mr. Satoshi one sounds particularly good! So glad I could post this comment. For some inexplicable reason I could not post yesterday.

[Rhys]

I am planning to read the Anita Desai. I heard her talking about writing generally and also writing these stories on the radio programme Open Book recently and she sounded so matter of fact and so modest about her writing that I was hooked !

[Cornflower]

Thanks, Rhys, I've just listened to the podcast of that programme: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/openbook