General Chat

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x jill

The vote will be around 5pm UK time today regardless of anyone missing as I have to get it finished by Thursday evening. I wonder why Berona hasn't posted I know she is around because she was on the Aussie thread on Chat last night.

Incidentally are there any volunteers to take over this group please, not that I want to leave the group but it is a bit time consuming to have to keep logging on to see if people have remembered the date of the suggestions/review threads. Thanks to those who make my life easier by sending me a pm before they go away with either their suggestions or their vote choice. It is a real help.

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Two suggestions from me. "Ferney" by James Long

'A story of love and self discovery that resonates across the ages' Nicholas Evans ** 'The book grips ... It belongs to the unputdownable, so goodbye sleep. I love it ... the whole story sang' Mary Wesley ** 'The book is a lovely puzzle ... an enthralling, ambitious novel with distinct echoes of Hardy' Mail on Sunday ** 'If a book ever deserved a second chance, it's this; a historical novel, a love story and a tale of time slippage, just the tale you need when you want to escape into a book and forget the world for 480 pages. I first read this many years ago and it was wonderful to get the chance to go back to it. As fresh and intriguing as ever, the love story and the historical detail are all done with a master's touch. There's many a current bestseller in this vein that can't hold a candle to Long's involving story' Sue Baker, Publishing News

"The Star of the Sea" by Joseph O'Connor

Tragedy is a word too often used. Nevertheless, in Star of the Sea Joseph O'Connor manages to achieve a real sense of the tragic, as personal dramas of the most distressing kind play themselves out against the background of the Irish potato famine and the almost equal nightmare of the mass emigration that it caused. As passengers die of starvation and disease in steerage, a drama of adultery, inadvertent incest and inherited disease plays itself out in first class. O'Connor raises, and does not attempt definitively to answer, real questions about responsibility and choice.
Bankrupt aristocrat Meredith is emigrating, pursued by the hatred of his tenants and the memory of his mad-hero father. His children's nurse, Mary, has memories of lost love to torment her, as well as of the husband and child who died of hunger. And the ballad singer Mulvey has both his monstrous past and the certain promise that he will be tortured to death by the Liable Men should he not kill Meredith. This is a kaleidoscopic novel, whose events are seen in many idioms, from many points of view--it is a rich novel that knows that there are limits to the sense that can be made of history. --Roz Kaveney