The Places You Will Go

Force of Habit

I love reading about nuns and convents - it must be something to do with the fact that I'm Catholic (lapsed) and attended a mission school from the age of six to 17.

Here is a list of books set in convents (schools as well as nunneries) that I've read and enjoyed:

Mariette in Ecstasy by Ron Hansen

In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden

Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy by Rumer Godden

Black Narcissus by Rumer Godden

The Land of Spices by Kate O'Brien

Frost in May by Antonia Frost

Quiet as a Nun (Jemima Shore Mysteries) by Antonia Fraser

New Habits by Isabel Losada (Non-fiction)

There's Something About a Convent Girl by Jackie Bennett And Rosemary Forgan (Non-fiction) 

Read Any Good Books Lately?

Find an opening

By DAPHNE LEE

WHEN I mentioned to a friend that I was writing an article about literary fiction, he asked, “Actually, what is literary fiction?” I immediately referred him to David Lubra’s Guide to Literary Fiction.

A Story to Move You

First published on 10th May, 2002 in StarTwo.

Review by DAPHNE LEE

ATONEMENT

By Ian McEwan

Publisher: Jonathan Cape, 388

(ISBN: 978-0224062527)

Gentle Approach to Race Issues

Star Mag, 10th December 2006

Reading the Blues Away

I have been reading Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels about witches because I needed to be cheered up and they seemed to do the trick.

I came to the end of Lords and Ladies yesterday and now there are no more to look forward to. After I put it back on the shelf I re-read the last 1/4 of A Hat Full of Sky because Granny Weatherwax appears in that and when I first first read the book I'd never encountered her before. I was intrigued though ... and inspired. She is my hero. Every Discworld book about witches makes me admire her more.

Mini Review: Snakes & Earrings

I'm not very familiar with Japanese fiction having read only three or four books by Kazuo Ishiguro, but several friends swear by it, especially Haruki Murakami's novels.

Yesterday I started and finished a Japanese novella that made me think that it's about time I paid more attention to other writers from that country.

The book is Snakes and Earrings by Hitomi Kanehara and it won her Japan's top literary prize (at age 20). It's about Lui, a Barbie-girl who meets Ama, a literally fork-tongued punk, and is introduced to the pleasures and pains of body piercing, tattooing and pervy sex via his tattoo-artist friend Shiba.

Shiba is a sadist and this suits self-destructive Lui just fine. Her inability to connect emotionally and honestly compels her to form near-anonymous and degrading relationships with these similar disenfranchised and emotionally bereft youths and from Shiba and the nipple-fixated Ama she gets an ample helping of agonising sex, which she faces and even solicits with an odd mixture of nonchalance and breathless anticipation.

Things get violent and sick, but personally speaking, I was too fascinated and to stop reading.

It's not written for teenagers but I can imagine teens being absolutely riveted by this book. Not only is it easy to read (the language is simple, stark and blunt yet vivid, evocative and forceful), it describes stuff that's thoroughly kinky and forbidden, thus endlessly, deliciously, compellingly appealing.

However, I'm not sure if I'd encourage my children (if they were teenagers) to read it. If they really wanted to I'd want a lot of discussion before and after. At very least the sex and violence, explicit as they are, are not at all gratuituos and that's much, much more than I can say of a lot of the coyly titillating rubbish on the Young Adult Fiction shelves these days.

Love Hurts

StarMag

Death of the heart

Review by DAPHNE LEE

THE LANDSCAPE OF LOVE

By Sally Beauman

Publisher: Little Brown

(ISBN:0316729434)

True Life

My review of The Whispering Road by Livi Michael appears in Star Mag today.

Here, I recommend 10 other works of fiction about real life.

Small but Beautifully Written

The Whitbread Book of the Year is Andrea Levy's Small Island.

The book was declared winner of the Whitbread Award Novel category on 6 January.

Read what The Times, The BBC and The Independent have to say.

Beauty Wins the Booker Prize

Alan Hollinghurst has been declared winner of the 2004 Man Booker Prize for his novel The Line of Beauty.

Read the BBC News article, What Price a Booker Prize Winner?, about how the prize means big bucks for its winners.

You can vote for your favourite of the 2004 Booker shortlist at the official website: The 2004 People's Prize.

The results, so far, are:

Bitter Fruit by Achmat Dangor 34.53% (308)

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell 33.3% (297)

I'll Go to Bed at Noon by Gerard Woodward 11.21% (100)

The Master by Colm Toibin 8.07% (72)

The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst 7.51% (67)

The Electric Michaelangelo by Sarah Hall 5.38% (48)

And if you're curious about past winners of the Booker, check out the complete list below (I know of people who don't read anything but award-winning novels, and those who use these lists to help them decide what books to buy).

Past Winners:

2003 Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre

2002 Life of Pi by Yann Martel

2001 True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey

2000 The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

1999 Disgrace by J M Coetzee

1998 Amsterdam by Ian McEwan

1997 The God of Small Things Arundhati Roy

1996 Last Orders by Graham Swift

1995 The Ghost Road by Pat Barker

1994 How Late It Was, How Late by James Kelman

1993 Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle

1992 The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje & Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth

1991 The Famished Road by Ben Okri

1990 Possession by A S Byatt

1989 The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

1988 Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey

1987 Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively

1986 The Old Devils by Kingsley Amis

1985 The Bone People by Keri Hulme

1984 Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner

1983 Life & Times of Michael K by J M Coetzee

1982 Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally, Schindler's Ark

1981 Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

1980 Rites of Passage by William Golding

1979 Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald

1978 The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch

1977 Staying On by Paul Scott

1976 Saville by David Storey

1975 Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

1974 The Conversationist by Nadine Gordimer & Holiday by Stanley Middleton

1973 The Siege of Krishnapur by J G Farrell

1972 G by John Berger

1971 In a Free State by V S Naipaul

1970 The Elected Member by Bernice Rubens

1969 Something to Answer For by P H Newby