Bridge Street Books

Wicklow

what Hilary says:  best book I've read it yonks!  brilliant

what the book says:  Nuri is a young boy when his mother dies. It seems that nothing will fill the emptiness that her strange death leaves behind in the Cairo apartment he shares with his father. Until Mona.  When Nuri first sees Mona, sitting in her bright yellow swimsuit by the pool of the Magda Marina holiday resort, the rest of the world vanishes. But it is Nuri's father with whom Mona falls in love and who she will eventually marry. And their happiness consumes Nuri to the point where he longs to get his father out of the way.  However, Nuri will soon regret what he wished for. And, as he and his stepmother's world is shattered by events beyond their control, they both begin to realise how little they really knew about the man they loved. In a voice that is delicately wrought and beautifully tender, Hisham Matar asks, in his extraordinary new novel, when a loved one disappears how does their absence shape the lives of those who are left?

what Joanna says:  for lovers of Child 44, this is a novel set in the depths of a Moscow winter.  At turns interesting and scary, but always extremely compulsive.  This is a story of a man - an English lawyer, who lives in Moscow to escape London - who falls in love with a Russian girl & due to his infatuation will do anything she asks of him.

what the book says:  an intensely riveting psychological drama that unfolds over the course of one Moscow winter, as a young Englishman's moral compass is spun by the seductive opportunities revealed to him by a new Russia: a land of hedonism and desperation, corruption and kindness, magical dachas and debauched nightclubs; a place where secrets - and corpses - come to light only when the deep snows start to thaw - Snowdrops is a chilling story of love and moral freefall: of the corruption, by a corrupt society, of a corruptible young man.  It is taut, intense and has a momentum as irresistible to the reader as the moral danger that first enchants, then threatens to overwhelm, its narrator

And what we thought of these.....

Hilary:

'Room'  Emma Donoghue

what she says: fantastic. it really stays with you afterwards. haunting.  brilliant book club read

what the book says:

It's Jack's birthday, and he's excited about turning five. Jack lives with his Ma in Room, which has a locked door and a skylight, and measures 11 feet by 11 feet. He loves watching TV, and the cartoon characters he calls friends, but he knows that nothing he sees on screen is truly real - only him, Ma and the things in Room.   Until the day Ma admits that there's a world outside.  Told in Jack's voice, Room is the story of a mother and son whose love lets them survive the impossible.  Unsentimental & sometimes funny. devastating yet uplifting - this is a novel like no other.

Joanna:

'The Good Parents'  Joan London

what she says:  interesting.  compelling.  good holiday read.

what the book says:

A novel of loss and longing featuring parents who search for their missing teenage daughter whilst recollecting her and their own lives.  Maya de Jong, an 18 year old country girl, moves away from home to live in the city.  Here she begins an affair with her boss, whose wife is dying of cancer.  When Maya's parents, Toni & Jacob arrive to stay with her, they are told by her house mate that Maya is gone & no-one knows where she is.  As Toni & Jacob search for their daughter, everything in their lives is thrown into doubt.  They recall the dreams & ideals, the betrayals & choices of their youth - choices with unexpected & irrevocable consequences.  As if, the bring Maya back, they must return to their past.

'Serena' Ron Rash

what she says: It really is very good!

what the book says:

The year is 1929, and newlyweds George and Serena Pemberton arrive from Boston in the North Carolina mountains to create a timber empire. Serena is new to the mountains - but she soon shows herself the equal of any worker, overseeing crews, hunting rattlesnakes, even saving her husband's life in the wilderness. Yet she also learns that she will never bear a child.
Serena's discovery will set in motion a course of events that will change the lives of everyone in this remote community. As the Pembertons' intense, passionate marriage starts to unravel, this riveting story of love, passion and revenge moves toward its shocking reckoning

Joanna:

'The Secret Intensity of Everyday life'  William Nicholson

what she says:  set in a small village in England, this is a series of interlinked short stories.  Clever, funny, quirky. Very enjoyable

what the book says:

Laura is content enough with her marriage, two children and part-time job. That is, until a lover from her past comes back into her life. Suddenly passion and excitement are rekindled, and she realises how stagnant her life has become. But how much happiness has she a right to expect?

'The Holy Thief'  William Ryan

what she says:  for lovers of 'Child 44' Tom Rob Smith, 'The Holy Thief' is set during Stalinist Russia.  It gives an interesting, although terrifying, insight into a world I know nothing about.

what the book says:

Moscow 1936. In a deconsecrated Church, a young woman is found dead. Captain Alexei Dimitrevich Korolev of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Moscow Militia, is asked to investigate. But when he discovers that the victim is an American citizen, the NKVD - the most feared organisation in Russia - becomes involved.  One false move could mean exile.

'The Book of Negroes'  Lawrence Hill

what she says: Brilliant - so moving, so traumatic.

what the book says:

Abducted from her West African village at the age of eleven and sold as a slave in the American South, Aminata Diallo thinks only of freedom - and of finding her way home again. After escaping the plantation, torn from her husband and child, she passes through Manhattan in the chaos of the Revolutionary War, is shipped to Nova Scotia, and then joins a group of freed slaves on a harrowing return odyssey to Africa. Based on a true story, Lawrence Hill's epic novel spans three continents and six decades to bring to life a dark and shameful chapter in our history through the story of one brave and resourceful woman.

'The Knife of Never Letting Go'  Patrick Ness

what she says:  BRILLIANT.  It's light fantasy, so I was really dreading reading it - really not my thing.  But the pacy writing; the characters; the cliff hangers.....really well written - very worthy of the 'Guardian Award' it won in 2008.  Not one to stick with series, I find myself picking up number 2 ('The Ask & The Answer') and really looking forward to getting my teeth in!  Young adult/adult books, well worth reading!

what the book says:

Todd Hewitt is the last boy in Prentisstown.  But Prentisstown isn't like other towns.  Everyone can hear everyone else's thoughts in a constant, overwhelming, never-ending Noise.  There is no privacy.  There are no secrets.  Or are there??!  Just 1 month away from his birthday that will make him a man, Todd unexpectedly stumbles upon a spot of complete silence.  Which is impossible.  Prentisstown has been lying to him.  And now he has to run......

This is an unflinching novel about the impossible choices of growing up.  Imagine you're the only boy in a town of men. And you can hear everything they think. And they can hear everything you think.
Imagine you don't fit in with their plans...Todd Hewitt is just one month away from the birthday that will make him a man. But his town has been keeping secrets from him. Secrets that are going to force him to run...

****Stay with the series, as 'The Ask & The Answer' is pretty good too!!!!

'Remarkable Creatures' Tracy Chevalier

what she says: back to as good as 'The Girl With The Pearl Earring'.  Really Good

what the book says:

In the early nineteenth century, a windswept beach along the English coast brims with fossils for those with the eye! From the moment she's struck by lightning as a baby, it is clear Mary Anning is marked for greatness. When she uncovers unknown dinosaur fossils in the cliffs near her home, she sets the scientific world alight, challenging ideas about the world's creation and stimulating debate over our origins.
In an arena dominated by men, however, Mary is soon reduced to a serving role, facing prejudice from the academic community, vicious gossip from neighbours, and the heartbreak of forbidden love. Even nature is a threat, throwing bitter cold, storms, and landslips at her. Luckily Mary finds an unlikely champion in prickly, intelligent Elizabeth Philpot, a middle-class spinster who is also fossil-obsessed.
Their relationship strikes a delicate balance between fierce loyalty and barely suppressed envy. Despite their differences in age and background, Mary and Elizabeth discover that, in struggling for recognition, friendship is their strongest weapon. Remarkable Creatures is Tracy Chevalier's stunning new novel of how one woman's gift transcends class and gender to lead to some of the most important discoveries of the nineteenth century.
Above all, it is a revealing portrait of the intricate and resilient nature of female friendship.

''Brixton Beach' Roma Tearne

what she says: absolutely brilliant! i can't stop thinking about it - especially the characters

what the book says:

Opening dramatically with the horrors of the 2005 London bombings, this is the profoundly moving story of a country on the brink of civil war and a child's struggle to come to terms with loss. London. On a bright July morning a series of bombs brings the capital to a halt.
Simon Swann, a medic from one of the large teaching hospitals, is searching frantically amongst the chaos and the rubble. All around police sirens and ambulances are screaming but Simon does not hear. He is out of breath because he has been running, and he is distraught.
But who is he looking for? To find out we have first to go back thirty years to a small island in the Indian Ocean where a little girl named Alice Fonseka is learning to ride a bicycle on the beach. The island is Sri Lanka, and its community is on the brink of civil war. Alice's life is about to change forever.
Soon she will have to leave for England, abandoning her beloved grandfather, and accompanied by her mother Sita, a woman broken by a series of terrible events. In London, Alice grows into womanhood. Trapped in a loveless marriage, she has a son.
Slowly she fulfils her grandfather's prophecy and becomes an artist. Eventually she finds true love. But London in the twenty-first century is a mass of migration and suspicion.
The war on terror has begun and everyone, even Simon Swann, middle class, rational, medic that he is, will be caught up in this war in the most unexpected and terrible way.

'The Housekeeper & the Professor' Yoko Ogawa

she says:  quirky, warm, funny, yet somehow tragic. perfect for the long warm summer days

what the book says:

He is a brilliant maths professor with a peculiar problem - ever since a traumatic head injury seventeen years ago, he has lived with only eighty minutes of short-term memory. She is a sensitive but astute young housekeeper who is entrusted to take care of him. Each morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper are reintroduced to one another, a strange, beautiful relationship blossoms between them.

The Professor may not remember what he had for breakfast, but his mind is still alive with elegant equations from the past. He devises clever maths riddles - based on her shoe size or her birthday - and the numbers reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her ten-year-old son. With each new equation, the three lost souls forge an affection more mysterious than imaginary numbers, and a bond that runs deeper than memory.