Listening to: Olly Murs "Army of Two"
Outside: Snow that looks like bits of styrofoam! And bright sunshine. How bizarre!
Check. These. Out.
Claire King's debut The Night Rainbow.
A rainbow spans both countries: UK and USA covers
Told entirely from the perspective of a five-year-old, this novel floors you when you least expect it. It is heartbreaking and stunning. It takes approximately one page to be hooked. I fell in love with our main character, little Pea, and the drama of her experiences over the course of a summer.
The Night Rainbow is a story about hope. Written by Claire King, a Yorkshire lass who lives in the South of France, who I got the chance to meet just recently, it is a masterful work that reminds us that, yes, rainbows can appear in the unlikliest of places.
Claire writes about writing, family, and the endless adventures of life itself here.
Jeet Thayil's debut Narcopolis.
Telling it like it is.
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012, this novel packs a punch. Set in the turbulent streets of 1970s Bombay, it is one of the most shocking reads I've ever pried open. It's right up there with Bret Easton Ellis and Chuck Palahniuk and Will Self (another Man Booker Prize 2012 shortlisted author). I appreciate the roundness of the story - its chronology is complex, and we do some head-hopping from character to character, but Jeet works it carefully and expertly. I never thought I could get right down in the dust with smackheads, eunuchs, and begger women. I never thought I would sit side-by-side unwashed bodies, recline with them and enter an opium-induced hallucinatory dream of a struggling and fraught man. It is addictive, mystifying, beautiful. It explores the ferocity of drug addiction, the intoxication of sex, the ways in which we define gender and religion. It grabs you by the short hairs.
And so, with that, I am going to now disappear in a midnight circus. Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus awaits.
P.S. An update on my uphill trek to publication...Four, count 'em, four literary agents are now reading my little book! Fingers crossed everybody!
Happy Sunday, all!
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