Homecoming
Marilyn Robinson
When Marilynne Robinson’s novel Home came out, I read it and the companion Gilead back-to-back. Presented the eyes and thoughts of single narrator (in one an elderly preacher, the other a daughter returned home to nurse her ailing father) very little material happens outside the routine of daily life. The magic is in the connection established between reader and chronicler, as intimate a relationship as I’ve always imagined an author must have with her character. I also think I finally understand just what religion can mean on an individual level. The two novels, parallel and complimentary, illuminate one another and deserve to be read as a duet.
Payback
Margaret Atwood
Rather than read Payback by Margaret Atwood, I heard her present the essays from this book in the 2009 CBC Massey Lectures. In them she addresses debt in all its contexts, economic, social, political, moral and environmental, in a thorough and highly accessible way. Presented with her trademark mixture of ironic humour and acute insight (published just before the financial melt-down), it should do for public awareness of economics what Al Gore’s movie did for global warming
The City and The City
China Mieville
Cross-jurisdictional policing is difficult at the best of times, let alone in The City & The City, China Mieville’s latest creation. Once unified, these cities have split culturally, linguistically, politically and financially in two while remaining not only contiguous but even (in places) sharing the same grosstopology. Inhabitants mingle constantly but scrupulously “unsee” each other’s world, a nicety strictly enforced by a secret military. Pity the poor detective who has to solve the murder one of his fellow citizens in the other city. Although a change in genre, this tone of this novel will be instantly recognisable to readers of Mieville’s steampunk fiction (as are real-world parallels of place) and should win him new fans too.
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