Had a wonderful "haul" from my last trip to the library... All fiction, as usual.
The "cream" was Jeanette Turner Hospital -- Due Preparations for the Plague (W.W.Norton).
Usually, I'm pretty sceptical when it comes to books centered around "government conspiracies", but this one "rang true" more than most; for all it takes place in the US, the official "excuses" (can't make an omelette without breaking eggs; sacrifice of innocents, in the cause of "greater good"...) are universal; I used to hear those throughout my childhood. At the centre is a terrorist kidnapping and subsequent blowing up of an airplane in 1987, and the way the surviors (children of the victims) deal with it. Particularly poignant is the fact that the two protagonists come to terms with the past and start looking forward on September 9, '01, in NY city... Since the book is copyrighted in '03, that's obviously an intentional "twist" to the seemingly happy ending. Extremely well written, too, and I'm looking forward to reading more of Hospital's books (there had been 6 previous ones, according to the blurb).
2. Amin Maalouf's "Balthasar's Odyssey" didn't, IMO, *quite* live up to the blurb's praise, but it was very interesting all the same. First-person narrative of a Genoese merchant (but 3rd? 4th? generation living in the Turk-controlled Levant) of the disquieting year 1666. As so often happens with European fiction (the book was written in French but the translation is so "seamless", you never notice it), the protagonist isn't *entirely* likeable -- much more a "real person" than a "hero". I never miss that aspect when reading English-language fiction but, when I read something that's non-English I suddenly realise that I've been deprived :)
3) A whole series -- and, for once, our library seems to have got on the ball right from the start (the usual practice is to start with the second or third one, leaving one looking for that elusive first <g>). Rosemary Aubert's mysteries: Free Reign,The Feast of Stephen, and The Ferryman Will Be There. Not very heavy on the mystery part, but wonderful in the homeless/environment issues of the present-day Toronto. The last one was published in '01; do our Canadian members know of any subsequent ones that I can be looking forward to?
----- Tamara P Duvall Lexington, Virginia, USA Formerly of Warsaw, Poland
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