Category: Rated

The Magician’s Assistant

One of the quirks of Fife libraries is that books are often assigned to genres they plain don’t belong to. I’m guessing it’s because the people involved have to make snap decisions based on the title, cover and blurb.
This book was sporting a fantasy sticker when I borrowed it and the blurb on the back was vague enough to suggest that it could well have been a subtle fantasy novel.
In fact this a very good mainstream fiction novel about a stage magician’s assistant.
She was his wife and inherits his fortune when he dies. While they were very close, the marriage was one of convenience because he was gay.
In the course of going through his estate she discovers that, after all these years of thinking he was an orphan, he has family back home in the midwest.
I really enjoyed this book and plan to read more by this author.

Rating: A

The History Of Love

Leo Gursky is a Polish Jew who arrived in America after surviving the horrors of World War 2. A writer by nature he wrote a book about the only girl he ever loved – the girl who left for the USA before German onslaught could begin.
Alma Singer is nearly fifteen, a Jewish girl growing up in New York, her family traumatised by the loss of her father. She is named after every girl in a book called A History Of Love.
After Alma’s mother is asked to translate A History Of Love from the Spanish into English events begin intertwine and histories unravel as Krauss spins the story’s threads.
This a lovely, surprisingly moving, little book about the nature of love, human connection and the power of lies and self-deception to alter lives.
I’d definitely recommend it as a read if you’re not in a particularly cynical frame of mind.

Rating: A

The Outsider by Albert Camus