Wednesday, August 21, 2013

A Widow for One Year

By John Irving

It's difficult to summarise this book - a lot of significant characters. Eddie - a 16 year old boy who falls in love with Marion, an older woman who lost her two boys and leaves her husband and daughter. Ruth, Marion's daughter who finds it difficult to settle down and find peace, and Ted, Ruth's dad who writes children's book but has passting attractions to little kid's mothers. Lastly, Harry, a dutch cop who is more interested in finding the witness to a murder than to find the murderer. Interesting.[592 pp.]

Book link

Friday, August 9, 2013

Snowstrom [Hebrew]

By Michal Shalev

An interesting story about seeminly unrelated guests in a cabin guesthouse who find themselves isolated from the rest of the world due to a snowstorm in the Golan Heights. Having not much else to do, they tell their stories to each other - some about life during WWII, others about their past in religious communities. All the while, the search for the leader of a terrorist group that targets mosques is going on. Here, too, as in the previous book, there were some rough descriptions of horrible things happening to people. Again, not a book I would like to see a movie version of... I felt cheated by the photos at the end. At first they made me think that these are the actual people whose stories are told in the book (even though there was no indication beforehand that the stories are based or real occurences). Then you find out that they are for illustration purposes only. What's the point? I already had an image in my head for each character, why ruin it? [439 pp.]

Book link