A dazzling experiment in “what if”, Atkinson’s novel follows the short (or long) life of Ursula Todd, born on a cold English night in 1910, as she lives her life over and over again while chance and history determine her fate.
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Some of our Favorites for 2013
Here's a sampling of our favorite reads for 2013.
StaffLibrary Staff
Vancouver Public Library
User from Vancouver Public Library
15 items
Life After Life
[a Novel]
- Fans of fantasy and fairy tales should not miss out on this, the latest from Neil Gaiman. It’s a quick, escapist adventure told by a lonely, bookish 7 year old child. Enchanting.
- A quirky, quick read written in the style of a self-help manual, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia follows the journey of a poor rural boy as he becomes a wealthy business tycoon. A love story, plenty of humour and social commentary on the…
- Khaled Hosseini's third novel is told via a series of interlinking stories—beginning in an Afghanistan village in 1952 when an impoverished man is faced with the prospect of giving up one of his children in order to survive. From this crucial…
- A collection of sharp and funny stories about unusual relationships and people at odds with their surroundings. A morose nun, a man who does not understand the women in his life, and a young woman trying to find relief in the pain of an S&M…
- As well as being holiday season for many cultures, December is also the month that commemorates World AIDs Day. This moving coming-of-age novel looks back to the pre-drug cocktail days in the struggle against AIDS, the toll the disease took on…
- You might say that Linda Spalding’s novel is about stewardship as Daniel Dickinson is ostracized from his Quaker community and attempts to exert his control over a new land settlement, his family, his beliefs about slavery, and his pride. Told from…
- In Scofield’s funny and sad examination of Ireland’s “Mammy culture”, we meet Philomena (a.k.a. Our Woman) who’s not exactly happy, but surviving the ups-and-downs of farm life. The discovery of her son’s homosexuality and the long-term affair her…
- Creepy, unsettling, and brilliant! Oates’ novel recounts the kidnapping of a very young boy named Robbie Whitcomb by a man who calls himself Daddy Love. Oates details the cycle of sexual and physical abuse and conditioning that bond the two as…
- 58-year-old Arthur Opp weighs 550 pounds and lives in lonely, self-imposed exile. A blossoming friendship with his 19-year-old cleaning maid, Yolanda, and the rekindling of a decades old obsession with a former student, gradually draw Arthur back…
- Anyone interested in the art of writing owes it to themselves to read through the novels of Jincy Willett. In Amy Falls Down, we are reunited with many of the characters from The Writing Class. Amy, a has-been writer, suffers an accidental fall and…
- At the center of Jonathan Lethem’s superb new novel stand two extraordinary women: Rose Zimmer, the aptly nicknamed Red Queen of Sunnyside, Queens, is an unreconstructed Communist who savages neighbors, family, and political comrades with the…
- Amy Tan, author of the Joy Luck Club's latest novel tells a story of family secrets and betrayal in early twentieth century Shanghai. Violet Minturn, a half-Chinese, half-American courtesan who deals in seduction and illusion in Shanghai, struggles…
- From the writer of My Year of Meats comes this tale of two wise and funny women from two different worlds. The first is a novelist named Ruth who finds the diary of a Japanese schoolgirl washed up on the beach of her island home in Desolation Sound,…
- The story takes you back to the day Philippe Petit, a French acrobat, walks a tightrope between the twin towers of the newly opened World Trade Center, initiating an outward spiral that captures the unexpected. The heartbreak from the consequences…
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