First thoughts
IRISH-BORN writer Margaret Mazzantini has had considerable commercial and critical success in Europe, winning the Strega Prize for her third novel Don’t Move. Now her international breakout novel Twice Born is available in this part of the world.
Soon to be adapted into a feature film starring Penelope Cruz, this book is a moving, graphic account of one woman’s escape from some of the most heinous atrocities of modern times, clinging to her newborn child, and her struggle to overcome the loss of the greatest love of her life.
Awash with vivid memories and powerful emotion, Mazzantini’s latest offering charts the course of Italian graduate student Gemma’s intense love affair with Diego, a photographer with a notorious past.
In the background is the terrible conflict in the former Yugoslavia, as the tale twists and turns through time, and adult Gemma eventually returns with her teenage son to the country where his father perished.
A stunning book.
Review: Julie Cheng
THE author of Contact and So He Takes The Dog returns with a story about Daniel Brennan, a middle-aged man nearing the end of his life due to a degenerative disease resulting in disfiguring external tumours.
Older brother Charlie and his wife Janina decide to move Daniel into their home and appoint a new carer, Ellen. As Daniel adapts to his new surroundings and comes to terms with his impending death, he exorcises his gloom by writing a journal.
Filling the pages with his life, relationships with his parents, brother, younger sister Celia and close friend Stephen, Daniel blurs fiction with reality — often embellishing circumstances and situations.
Reading his daily entries, Ellen begins to see past her charge’s physical appearance, somehow getting to know the real Daniel.
A charming read with descriptive character observations, littered with delightful snippets of historical, social and literary commentary.
Review: Roddy Brooks
EVERY schoolchild should know that Katherine of Aragon was one of the six wives of English despot Henry VIII.
What many probably will not know is t she came from the most powerful dynasty of her time, a princess in her own right and a sister to the Holy Roman Emperor.
This made her treatment at the hands of Henry all the more despicable. Cast aside when she was unable to bear him a living son and heir, she had to watch as her place in his affections was usurped by others and the Catholic religion that was her lifeblood was smashed from her adopted home.
Julia Fox, in her second book on a royal theme, tells of Katherine’s torment and the skulduggery afoot in the time of the most infamous Tudor king.
It also mirrors the treatment meted out to Katherine’s sister, Juana, whose rightful place as the queen of Castile, now part of Spain, was denied her by her father and her son. Fascinating.
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