Dilworth School

136,421 pages read and 4,495 team points

Team members

Andy R

3,246 pts

(2,984 pages read)

The Overstory

By Richard Powers

5 stars

This is a really great read for anyone interested in our devastating impact on the world we live in. It wears its heart on its sleeve in being unabashedly pro nature in the face of the predations of the capitalist machine, but it is never simplistic in its character development . if you need somewhere to go after watching "Don't Look Up', this book is it.
The Island of Missing Trees

By Elif Shafak

3 stars

Work in Progress
The Librarianist

By Patrick deWitt

3 stars

Short review of The Librarianist - this is a yarn in which, all of a sudden, nothing much happens apart from one very big coincidence involving a woman the protagonist, Bob, loved and lost to his best friend many decades previously. Bob, does not do much with this revelation besides subsiding into dementia after regaling us with an interlude from his youth in which he ran away from home and fell in with some travelling players who are sub-Dickensian in their eccentricities. There is no pay off to this interlude - nobody learns anything - and then Bob is back in the present with a broken hip and some memories. This book is a victory for style over substance.
My Name is Lucy Barton

By Elizabeth Strout

5 stars

Lucy, the protagonist, is recovering from an operation when she is visited in her hospital bed by her estranged mother. This prompts Lucy to appraise and reappraise things that have happened in her life. She grew up poor in rural America and experienced early hardships that were alleviated by a scholarship to college and after that a shift of scene to New York City, marriage, children. Lucy is haunted by her upbringing, however, and in a series of conversations with her mother we get closer to the "thing" that has been driving Lucy's life long quest to be her own woman. Her writing has saved her from imploding in the way that many people mentioned in her reminiscences with mother have failed in their lives. The ruthlessness that writing requires, however, struggles for dominance with Lucy's basic sense of empathy and compassion for others, even those who looked down on her in the past of have hurt her on her journery. It reminds me of "Small Things Like These" by Claire Keegan in its insistence that the compassionate acts of individual people are what redeem us.
Human Universe

By Brian Cox & Andrew Cohen

3 stars

Bought for $1 at the New Lynn Lyon's Club book sale, this is a non-fiction account of: Where are we? Are we alone? Who are we? Why are we here? What is our Future? Cox (not come across Cohen's sections yet) writes with lyrical flow about where he comes from and where he understands the Earth to be in our universe. He is sparing with the technical data that could overwhelm a non-scientist like me. I will read this alongside the Norman Mailer and decide who comes up with the best answers to Cox's questions.
Living in the Maniototo

By Janet Frame

5 stars

Frame's alter-ego, Alice Thumb, is looking back over her life in New Zealand and the USA. She skewers The North Shore of Auckland - Blenheim - in a way that still holds good today in terms of it's acquisitiveness and lack of soul. She also portrays a Baltimore beset by poverty, gangs and violence (long before The Wire got off the ground!). Her metaphors are endlessly effective in describing people, places and situations. Is there a final destination for this book? I'm not sure and I don't care with writing this good.
The King Is Always Above The people

By Daniel Alarcon

4 stars

Alarcon is from Guatemalan heritage and he writes from a Hispanic American pov about the struggles of immigrants trying to survive and make it in the harsh reality of the USA (The Ballad of Rocky Rontal). He also writes about Central American lives (The King Is Always Above The People) and the struggles of his characters to forge their own independent existences (The Auroras).
The Girl With All The Gifts

By M. R. Carey

5 stars

Surprisingly gripping "Zombie" caper. The setting is a post apocalyptic United Kingdom (post Brexit :-o) with conversation rhythms lifted from American cinema / TV, however, the world building is convincing and the predicament of the little girl in the title, a zombie-human hybrid, is genuinely poignant. The pacing keeps you reading and the author does a good job of making us care about the central question for our protagonist: what am I?
The Searcher

By Tana French

3 stars

Retired Chicago cop, drawn into rural mystery out in the boonies. He is drawn into a missing person case against his better judgement. So far so good. Opening chapter establishes a believable setting and introduces rustics who fascinate and appal our protagonist Cal Hooper. Oh, and he's being watched by someone... or something. Slow burn of a book that is, ultimately, underwhelming in the wrapping up.

35 - 0 - 1

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Dilworth School

136,421 pages read and 4,495 team points

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