All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

Paul KimberleyBookshop - Sunday, September 18, 2011

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

 

The first in the "Border Trilogy".  I should have read this novel a long time ago.  A great portrayal of frontier life.  It reminds me of Larry McMurtry with the gloves off.  Like all great westerns it is the story of a good man treated badly and the journey.  Like the road I thought this book was simultaneously devasting in some of its character portrayals and settings but somehow positive or optimistic.  Brilliant.  Buy the trilogy! http://kimberleybookshop.e-web.com.au/Fiction/Fiction/border-trilogy

 

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Deniable Death by Gerald Seymour

Paul KimberleyBookshop - Wednesday, July 06, 2011
I admit to becoming a fan of Gerald Seymour's writing.  A  "Deniable Death sets a measured pace that is more slow burn than explosive, not suddenly ferocious, but the devastation is still there at the end.  Like his previous book "Dealer and the Dead", this book manages to recruit members from obscure parts of the government as well as more traditional espionage types and a well described and colourful group of characters they are.  All it seems with their own, sometime conflicting agendas.  A gripping human saga set against conflicts spanning the Cold War to Iraq.

 
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Warsaw Anagrams by Richard Zimler

Paul KimberleyBookshop - Sunday, June 12, 2011
The Warsaw Anagrams is a bittersweet novel centered around an elderly Psychiatrist in the Nazi-established Warsaw Ghetto.
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The Book of Evidence by John Banville

Paul KimberleyBookshop - Sunday, June 12, 2011

Book of Evidence by John Banville

A thoroughly disturbing book. Frederick is the indolent self absorbed central character in this book who alsmost as an afterthought murders the maid of a friend he visits. He is repellent and I have limited my self to reading this in 10 page bursts - I can't stomach much more of him then this at a time. A great story though for all that.
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The Cut by George Pelecanos

Paul KimberleyBookshop - Tuesday, June 07, 2011

The Cut by George Pelecanos

This is the first novel I have read by George Pelecanos and I am glad that I was made to feel guilty enough to give this a read.  As Spero drives (or rides, runs or paddles through Washington and its surrounds I was riding right along with him.  Shotgun. He is a troubled complex guy whose experience have lent him a recklessness as well as a better understanding of the important things.  With a handful of friends and acquaintances just waiting to mix it up on his word there are lots of opportunities for action and mayhem and this book comes through with them.

As in lots of great crime novels the setting always plays a star role, Washington does this well – alongside Spero we see the change in neighbourhoods,  No-go areas become gentrified. Greeks move out and Ethiopians move in.  Schools change names the city changes name of streets and areas to cover its grubby, dangerous past.

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Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz

Paul KimberleyBookshop - Friday, December 03, 2010
Like Martin's Labyrinth I lost my way in this enormous novel once or twice. Great Book or maybe there were several books there?
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