Книги, похожие на «Lionel Shriver, Checker and the Derailleurs»

A major new novel from the critically acclaimed author of IF THE INVADER COMES.On Boxing Day 1962 it began to snow. Over the next two months England froze. It was the coldest winter since 1740. The sea iced over. Cars could be driven across the Thames.Riding home from London in that first snowfall, on the powerful motorbike he has been given for Christmas, seventeen-year-old Alan Rae has a brush with death. Immediately he meets a girl, Cynthia, who will change his life. But someone else is equally preoccupied with her, Geoffrey, a young scientist who works with Alan's father in the race with the Americans and the Russians to develop the microchip. Alan, Geoffrey and Cynthia become linked by a web of secrets which, while the country remains in icy suspension, threatens everything they ever trusted.Derek Beaven's new novel is a moral drama. It demands that we question who our real friends are, and asks us to reconsider the scientific assumptions upon which all of modern life, and much of modern fiction, is based.

A big, intensely involving and evocative Indian novel, with its story of a woman’s fight for her place in the world, reminiscent of Khaled Hosseini’s ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’.The dew hasn't formally evaporated off the mustard leaves outside. Except for the sleeping baby, she is alone at home. Her mother gave her this much. As an excuse Lata Bai left Shanti behind for Mamta to look after. She has an hour before her mother will return from the well.Mamta runs her hand over her wedding sari. For a minute she considers why it is already lying unwrapped, in precise folds gleaming like a treasure in her mother's tin trunk, then she remembers her mother had used the wrapping to deliver Shanti. She picks up a corner and looks through the sheerness of the fabric. Everything turns red, the red of love. Mamta smiles. It is as it should be. «Keep my world red, oh Devi,» she prays. «Jai ho Devi, Devi Jai ho,» she recites her mother's words. Almost a married woman, she feels she has an equal right to them.’Mamta is one of seven children and learns early on in her childhood what it means to be born female in rural India. Married to a savagely unkind and brutal husband, she flees to the city to try and make a new life for herself. Sharing her story are her mother, Lata Bai, the saintly Lokend, her ever-loving brother Prem, a soul-searching bandit and a brutal landlord. This is a redemptive story, despite the often unforgiving setting, and one that is difficult to put down.