Belated thanks for the new thread, @Southeastdweller , and warmest congratulations @GrannieMainland !
I haven't caught up with the thread yet but I'll go ahead and post a few reviews.
@PermanentTemporary I enjoyed your review of When the Cranes Fly South as I just read that book as well.
24 When the Cranes Fly South, Lisa Ridzén, trans. Alice Menzies 4/5
Work book group read. A very moving novel narrated in the first-person by an elderly man living on his own in rural Sweden. He is experiencing gradual physical and mental decline, and the novel is interspersed by short ‘notes’ written by the carers who visit his home to look after him. I think that anyone who has experienced the decline of a beloved elderly parent will find this book an emotional read (I thought a great deal about my father when reading it, though he died many years ago now). The tension between father and son is very well portrayed: the son wants his father to be physically safe, while Bo (the father) struggles to cope with the gradual loss of his much-valued independence. I felt that the novel piled up too many losses toward the end. However, it is good to read a book that deals with end-of-life matters in such a sensitive and pragmatic way.
25 La Sorcière [The Witch], Marie NDiaye 3/5
International Booker Prize shortlist. I keep reading novels and plays by NDiaye, and wanting to like them more than I do, because she is such a gifted writer. This short novel is a provocative mix of feminism, magic realism / fairytale, horror, and social satire. I think my problem is that I’m too attached to plot to appreciate NDiaye properly. She starts lots of compelling narrative threads, but then characters suddenly disappear or morph into different creatures (I mean this metaphorically, but there are also some quite literal human-to-beast metamorphoses in this novel!). And I’m frustrated because there is so little narrative resolution. She goes daringly far in terms of leaving it up to the reader to decide what the story is about. All I can say is that I’m relieved I don’t have to teach this novel!
26 A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens 5/5
I just finished this for the read-along brilliantly hosted by @DesdamonasHandkerchief. What a wonderful novel. I hadn’t realised that the pacing is so different to other Dickens novels; he wrote it in weekly instalments, and so the novel is shorter and moves faster than his other serialised works. The French theme appealed to me enormously, given my Francophilia. Madame Defarge and Sydney Carton are legendary characters, and the narrative explores both individual and national trauma in very astute ways.
27 Ballet Shoes, Noel Streatfeild 4/5
An utterly charming book, the first I’ve ever read by Streatfeild. I was surprised that a novel with such a ‘girly’ theme (ballet) should have so many progressive elements. Of the three young sisters, the middle sister prefers cars and planes to dance lessons. The girls are given academic lessons by a pair of retired academics who are clearly a lesbian couple, though this is never stated outright. And there are many interesting references to the wider world: to former British colonies, to refugees of the Russian revolution, and so on. At times I felt a little bogged down by the detailed accounts of how many hours the girls worked and how many shillings they earned, but all in all, this is a very rich book and I can see why it became a children’s classic. I now want to watch the online version of the recent National Theatre stage production.