The American Boy- Andrew Taylor

"A wonderful book, richly composed and beautifully written, an enthralling read from start to finish" The Times.

England 1819: Thomas Shield, a new master at a school just outside London, is tutor to an American boy and the boy's sensitive best friend, Charles Frant. Drawn to Frant's beautiful, unhappy mother, Thomas becomes caught up in her family's twisted intrigues. Then a brutal crime is commited, with consequences that threaten to destroy Thomas and all that he has come to hold dear. Despite his efforts, Shield is caught up in a deadly tangle of sex, money, murder and lies- a tangle that grips him tighter even as he tries to escape from it. And what of the strange American child at the heart of these macabre events- what is the secret of the boy named Edgar Allen Poe?

I Have for the last 2 years, been picking this book up at the library, only to replace it on the shelf, believing that it was not my kind of read. How wrong I was! The prose is masterful and put me in mind of Dickens, evoking a compelling portrait of early 1800's London society, with all it's corruption. Edgar Allen Poe's character is peripheral, yet his role in the story is central to the events that unfold. The characters are extremely vivid, epsecially the villainous Carswell, and Shield, as the narrator has the readers sympathy and respect. I liked the short chapters, most of which ended with mini cliff-hangers, making it impossible not to read on. Both the immaculate attention to historical detail, and the twists of plot make for a deeply satisfying read, and that the ending allows the reader to draw their own conclusions enhances rather than detracts from the finished work.
Andrew Taylor's novel, "The Office of The Dead" won The CWA Historical Dagger for Fiction and featured in Richard and Judy's Book Club, 2005. I will definitely be reading more Andrew Taylor.

"A most artful and delightful book, that will both amuse and chill" Daily Telegraph.

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian- Marina Lewycka

"Mad and hilarious" Daily Telegraph.

"Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blonde Ukranian divorcee. He was 84, and she was 36. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface a sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside."
Sisters Vera and Nadezhda must put aside a lifetime of feuding to save their emigre engineer father from voluptuous gold-digger Valentina. With her proclivity for green satin underwear and boil-in-the-bag cuisine, she will stop at nothing in her pursuit for Western wealth.

This book was laugh out loud funny and it's characters an absolute triumph! The use of the language spoken by many of the characters-half English, half Ukranian- really brought them to life. Lewycka brings humour to the struggles of immigration, but really captures a sense of these difficulties without seeming flippant. For me, some of the less likable characters, Vera, and Valentina for example are made vulnerable and human leading you to empathise with their take on the world. Despite the humour of the book, there is a darker theme, the past adversities suffered by the older generations. An evocative portrait of early twentieth century Soviet Union emerges, and is an education and a delight to read. This novel was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Bollinger Everyman Prize for Comic Fiction.
Fantastic.

"Thought provoking, uproariously funny, a comic feast." Economist