Two Good, One Dud

I finally read Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger, 25 years later. After a bumpy start I found an insightful examination of History, with a capital H, and history, and of different kinds of families and love. The story is told in the death-bed reflections of an extraordinary woman. Lively was born in Cairo and spent her childhood there. Her chapters placed in the desert battles of WW2 were incredibly evocative. I was not so captivated by her recent Consequences, but, I loved The Photograph from a few years ago, which had a great conceit that was wonderfully developed.

I read another of Eliot Pattison's mysteries set in modern Tibet, Beautiful Ghosts. These books are really about the people, culture & religion of Tibet, and the brutal oppression of all things Tibetan by the Communist Chinese. In this volume, Pattison develops the true story of the 1904 incursion into Tibet by the British Army and the officers who stayed behind to become lama artists. If you care about Tibet, Pattison's books are a must read.







Charlie Smith's Three Delays got rave reviews last year for its "hallucenigenic prose". What I found was druggie ramblings of disfunctional characters who repeatedly washed down 'ludes and meth with gulps of rum. Oi vey, you can skip this one.