On What Cathy Read Next last week
Monday – I shared My Top 5 March 2024 Reads.
Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was on the rain-related theme of April Showers (perhaps February, March and April showers would be more apt if you’re in the UK)
Wednesday – As always WWW Wednesday is a weekly opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next… and to take a peek at what others are reading.
Thursday – I shared my Q&A with author Angel Dionne about her debut short story collection, Sardines.
Friday – I published my review of The Wager by David Grann.
Saturday – The first Saturday of the month means it’s time for the #6Degrees of Separation meme. My chain had a distinctly Shakespearean theme.
New arrivals
Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent (Penguin)
Sally Diamond cannot understand why what she did was so strange. She was only doing what her father told her to do, to put him out with the rubbish when he died.
Now Sally is the centre of attention, not only from the hungry media and worried police, but also a sinister voice from a past she has no memory of. As she begins to discover the horrors of her childhood, recluse Sally steps into the world for the first time, making new friends, finding independence, and learning that people don’t always mean what they say.
But when messages start arriving from a stranger who knows far more about her past than she knows herself, Sally’s life will be thrown into chaos once again . . .
The Zone of Interest by Martin Amis (Vintage)
Once upon a time there was a king, and the king commissioned his favorite wizard to create a magic mirror. This mirror didn’t show you your reflection. It showed you your soul — it showed you who you really were.
The wizard couldn’t look at it without turning away. The king couldn’t look at it. The courtiers couldn’t look at it. A chestful of treasure was offered to anyone who could look at it for sixty seconds without turning away. And no one could.
The Zone of Interest is a love story with a violently unromantic setting. Can love survive the mirror? Can we even meet each other’s eye, after we have seen who we really are?
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (eARC, Hodder & Stoughton via NetGalley)
In the near future, a disaffected civil servant is offered a lucrative job in a mysterious new government ministry gathering ‘expats’ from across history to test the limits of time-travel.
Her role is to work as a ‘bridge’: living with, assisting and monitoring the expat known as ‘1847’ – Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to find himself alive and surrounded by outlandish concepts such as ‘washing machine’, ‘Spotify’ and ‘the collapse of the British Empire’. With an appetite for discovery and a seven-a-day cigarette habit, he soon adjusts; and during a long, sultry summer he and his bridge move from awkwardness to genuine friendship, to something more.
But as the true shape of the project that brought them together begins to emerge, Gore and the bridge are forced to confront their past choices and imagined futures. Can love triumph over the structures and histories that have shaped them? And how do you defy history when history is living in your house?
French Windows by Antoine Laurain (eARC, Gallic Books)
Nathalia, a young photographer, has been seeing a therapist. Having accidentally photographed a murder, she finds that she can no longer do her job.
Instead, Doctor Faber suggests that she write about the neighbours she idly observes in the building across the street. But as these written snapshots become increasingly detailed, he starts to wonder how she can possibly know so much about them.
With each session, Doctor Faber and his mysterious patient will get closer and closer to the truth. But are the stories Nathalia submits each week as she claims…
On What Cathy Read Next this week
Currently reading
Planned posts
- Book Review: Bonjour, Sophie by Elizabeth Buchan
- Author Q&A: The Callas Imprint by Sophia Lambton
- Author Q&A: A Place Without Pain by Simon Bourke
- Book Review: Sword of the War God by Tim Hodkinson
- Book Review: Girl Friends by Alex Dahl
What Cathy Read Next... 
I need to get to Girl Friends too, Cathy. It’s still languishing on my shelf . . . Happy reading. 💕📚
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It’s an ideal beach read, not necessarily in a luxury villa in Ibiza. Although, then again, why not? Review coming on Saturday as part of the blog tour.
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