Selene’s Layer

Synopsis
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a murder mystery novel like no other. The detective, and narrator, is Christopher Boone. Christopher is fifteen and has Asperger’s, a form of autism. He knows a very great deal about maths and very little about human beings. He loves lists, patterns and the truth. He hates the colours yellow and brown and being touched. He has never gone further than the end of the road on his own, but when he finds a neighbour’s dog murdered he sets out on a terrifying journey which will turn his whole world upside down.

This is the love story of Henry and Claire whose lives are punctuated by Henry’s disappearance to different points in time–sometimes even back to visit Claire as a young woman. When Henry meets Claire, he is twenty-eight, and she is twenty. He’s a hip, handsome librarian; she is an art student with Botticelli hair. Henry has never met Claire before; Claire has known Henry since she was six…

This extraordinary, magical novel is the story of Clare and Henry who have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-two and Henry thirty. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself pulled suddenly into his past or future. His disappearances are spontaneous and his experiences are alternately harrowing and amusing. The Time Traveler’s Wife depicts the effects of time travel on Henry and Clare’s passionate love for each other with grace and humour. Their struggle to lead normal lives in the face of a force they can neither prevent nor control is intensely moving and entirely unforgettable.

Click here to buy

This stunning second novel from Desai (Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard) is set in mid-1980s India, on the cusp of the Nepalese movement for an independent state.

Jemubhai Popatlal, a retired Cambridge-educated judge, lives in Kalimpong, at the foot of the Himalayas, with his orphaned granddaughter, Sai, and his cook. The makeshift family’s neighbors include a coterie of Anglophiles who might be savvy readers of V.S. Naipaul but who are, perhaps, less aware of how fragile their own social standing is—at least until a surge of unrest disturbs the region.

Jemubhai, with his hunting rifles and English biscuits, becomes an obvious target. Besides threatening their very lives, the revolution also stymies the fledgling romance between 16-year-old Sai and her Nepalese tutor, Gyan.

The cook’s son, Biju, meanwhile, lives miserably as an illegal alien in New York. All of these characters struggle with their cultural identity and the forces of modernization while trying to maintain their emotional connection to one another. In this alternately comical and contemplative novel, Desai deftly shuttles between first and third worlds, illuminating the pain of exile, the ambiguities of post-colonialism and the blinding desire for a “better life,” when one person’s wealth means another’s poverty.

- Amazon

Meine Wertung: ****

Unfassbar, normalerweise lese ich ein Buch in 2 Tagen!
An diesem lese ich nun schon 3 Wochen und es ist kein Ende in Sicht.
Dabei kann ich nicht einmal behaupten, daß ich es schlecht finde. Nein, auch nicht langweilig, aber sobald ich es zur Seite gelegt habe, verspüre ich kein Bedürfnis weiter darin zu lesen. Folglich lese ich es in 25 Minuteneinheiten in der Schnellbahn – wenn ich denn überhaupt daran denke, daß ich es dabei habe…
Irgendetwas stimmt mit dem Buch nicht. Ganz sicher ist es nicht mein Buch des Jahres

Aus der Amazon.de-Redaktion
Wir haben es Schwarz auf Weiß: Es geht uns gut ist der beste deutschsprachige Roman 2005 und der Vorarlberger Arno Geiger bekommt deshalb als erster den neu geschaffenen Deutschen Buchpreis. Dass aber Juryentscheidungen äußerst subjektiv sind, beweist schon die Tatsache, dass Geiger mit dem ersten Kapitel aus eben diesem Familienroman beim Bachmannpreis 2004 die Juroren keineswegs begeisterte und leer ausging. Man muss sich also selbst ein Bild machen — und das ist nach der Lektüre zumindest ambivalent. Das beginnt schon bei der Grundkonstellation: Die Hauptfigur Philipp, ein 36-jähriger Schriftsteller, erbt das Haus seiner Großmutter und beginnt es auszuräumen. Statt sich für die Hinterlassenschaft und die Familiengeschichte (eigentlich wertvoller Stoff für jeden Schriftsteller) zu interessieren, schmeißt er alles weg. Eingestreut in die Aufräumaktion dieses Familienerinnerungsverweigerers wird dann aber doch in Rückblenden, anhand einzelner Tage von 1938 bis 1989, eben dessen Familiengeschichte — Großeltern, Eltern, die eigene Kindheit — erzählt.

Read the rest of this entry »