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The title, premise and cover of The Kissing Gates gives the promise of a classic wartime romantic melodrama and Mackenzie Ford’s debut certainly does that, but it also has much more to offer the reader. The particular love-triangle set-up, during the First World War, could hardly be more dramatic and involved. While entrenched on the front on that famous Christmas in 1914 when the British and German trips ceased hostilities for a brief period to exchange gifts and seasonal goodwill, Lieutenant Harry Montgomery, known as Hal, meets his German counterpart and is charged to carry to carry out an unusual request – to bring back a photo to an English girl he was engaged to in Stratford-upon-Avon before the war broke out. Invalided from the war soon afterwards however Hal looks Sam up, but falls in love with her himself and doesn’t reveal to her that he met her fiancé Wilhelm on the front. As the war drags on however, Hal realises that Sam just cannot forget Wilhelm. The romantic complicatio

Turgenev’s third novel isn’t his most satisfying, the author casting around his cast of characters to find a committed idealist and romantic hero to bring about social reform in his country, but ‘on the eve of reform’ he fails to find them in the Russian gentry of the time. Initially he examines the characters of Shubin, a talented sculptor, and Bersyenev, a scholar and academic, and, in a Turgenev way, he examines their character and commitment to a cause through their courting of Elena Stahov. In this both men are lacking, failing to show anything but surface attraction and devotion, but backing down when a rival for her affections gets in their way. In On The Eve then, it’s in the form of a Bulgarian revolutionary called Insarov that Turgenev finds the characteristics that he is seeking, but the romantic melodrama that follows isn’t the strongest section of the novel, and it wouldn’t be until the creation of in Bazarov in his subsequent masterpiece Fathers and Sons  (or Fathers and

Brodrick’s latest novel finds another investigation worthy of the ability and insight of Brother Anselm, a monk previously trained as a lawyer. It’s an understanding of not only the law but the deeper motivations of the human spirit that is required in A Whispered Name , and what greater mystery could there be than the personal events and upheavals endured by young men and boys under the command of unfathomable laws in the trenches of WWI? A mysterious visitor to the Larkwood monastery reveals and unknown aspect to the life of one of its oldest inhabitants, the founder of the monastery itself, Fr. Herbert Moore and his part in the sentencing of a young Irishman, Private Joseph Flanagan, charged with desertion during the battle for Passchendaele in 1917. Fr Moore however is now dead, leaving the events and incomplete accounts of the incident shrouded in secrecy. What drove a young Irishman to fight alongside the English? Why did he risk an unknown, perhaps personal mission that could se

Eager to gain funding for a scientific research group she belongs to, the beautiful Nelly-Rose Destol, having nothing else to offer in a lottery – her dead father’s fortune lost in foreign investments - innocently puts herself forward as a prize. Much to her surprise and to the horror of a rich gentleman who wants to marry her, this unusual prize attracts wide and even international attention. It’s on the Polish border with Russia that the news comes to the attention of two adventurers. One of them, a Frenchman called Gérard, has recently taken great risks to recover certain treasures and even the child of an exiled Russian Countess with the only payment being the “favour” of the beautiful woman. Intrigued by Nelly-Rose’s offer, Gérard’s older Russian colleague Ivan Borotof, having lost the Countess and his cut of the reward to Gérard, is willing to give up five million for a similar conquest, offering it in exchange for a night alone with the young woman, between the hours of midnight

Bueno, no sé si se lo merecía una segunda lectura después de veinte años, pero no hay duda que El amor en los tiempos del cólera sí es una obra magistral, una gran historia del amor elevado hasta el nivel de un melodrama poético. El amor de Florentino Ariza por Fermina Daza es un amor sin fin que resiste los tormentos de la guerra civil, la epidemia del cólera y los estragos del tiempo, y así, no se trata solo del amor, sino también del deseo, la memoria, la vejez, la vida y la muerte. Una novela sumamente humana, pues.

Whether it's through the shortness of its length or through the familiarity with typical Paul Auster subject matter, it's very easy to underestimate the true worth of the author's latest novel. Man in the Dark may indeed appear short and simple on the surface, but the importance of its subject matter and the emotional depth it covers is nonetheless remarkable.  Through August Brill, the man in the dark, Auster tries to make sense of the world through the medium of the writer spinning ideas in his head. Yes, that's nothing new with Auster and there's certainly a sense of post-modern reflection on the nature of writing and the duty of the writer, but as with Brooklyn Follies and his collection of True Tales Of American Life , Auster is interested in ordinary people and the impact of the exceptional or significant moments on their lives.  Those significant events affecting American people today are alluded to in the book's references to Iraq and the Twin Towers.