About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Elizabeth Miki Brina
Rave The Guardian (UK) This is how a woman in her 40s comes to terms with her identity in a supposedly racially aware America. It’s a story written with pathos, humour, grace and a massive dose of cringe ... The real skill here lies in the empathy the author has for her parents and for her younger self ... This is ultimately a study in the intricate survival mechanisms we use to cope with what’s going on around us ... The family story is interwoven with the mind-bendingly unfortunate history of Okinawa, which is recounted here in fascinating, vivid historical asides ... Her writing is so warm and honest that you find yourself rooting for her and her parents, thrilled at her \'adult learner\' conversations with her mother in stilted Japanese, willing them all to find a way to understand one another. This is quite simply a brilliantly original and affecting memoir.
Curtis Sittenfeld
Rave The Observer Curtis Sittenfeld\'s debut is an addictive portrait of adolescence—The OC meets Donna Tartt\'s The Secret History with flashes of Clueless ... Prep doesn\'t come sugar-coated: it is dark and obsessive examination of the cruelty of the coolness hierarchy ... The schoolmates who touch Lee\'s life, not that she notices until years later (the novel is written in retrospect), provide some of the book\'s most poignant moments ... Sittenfeld\'s strength is in making this experience feel universal. Despite the American specifics, everyone will wince with recognition at the horror of being a teenager. It\'s great to relive it all, now that it is happening to someone else.
Candace Bushnell
Positive The Observer This book is not quite what it seems. And that turns out to be a pleasant surprise. It’s Candace Bushnell’s meditation on what happens when life takes a wrong turn for her and her group of girlfriends. It’s bittersweet, amusing and well observed. It starts out being about sex and dating but really it’s about disappointment, regret and self-acceptance ... You get the impression that Bushnell would have been happy writing this as a memoir in the vein of Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck. But, instead, it is marketed as being about \'cubs\' (attractive young men) and \'cougars\' (attractive older women). It isn’t really ... The moments when it takes off are when we feel as if we’re getting close to who Bushnell really is: the woman who says she will do anything for a man but whose friends always come first, who can get ripped off by a beautician to the tune of $4,000 and who does not walk out on a date when a man stands in front of his bed and says: \'I’ve had a lot of great sex on that bed. And I hope to have a lot more in the future.\' That is a flawed and potentially interesting woman. If you can look past the MAM (Mid-Aged Madness) and MNBs (My New Boyfriends), it’s fun getting to know her.
Serhii Plokhy
Rave The Guardian As an author, he is a brilliant interpreter not only of the events themselves but of their longer-term historical significance. Plokhy definitely has his head around all the science (there’s a two-page footnote on roentgen, bone marrow and gamma rays). But he manages it so comfortably that even the biggest science-phobe (ie me) is not put off. More importantly, he never loses sight of the human picture ... This history reads like an academic thriller written by Malcolm Gladwell. Without losing any detail or nuance, Plokhy has a knack for making complicated things simple while still profound. As moving as it is painstakingly researched, this book is a tour de force and a cracking read. No physics GCSE required.
Amor Towles
Positive The Guardian If you want shopping at Bendel's, gin martinis at a debutante's mansion and jazz bands playing until 3am, Rules of Civility has it all and more. If you want something original that doesn't borrow at all from Breakfast at Tiffany's, The Great Gatsby or even Boardwalk Empire, you might be a little disappointed. Me, I lapped it all up … While you're lost in the whirl of silk stockings, furs and hip flasks, all you care about is what Katey Kontent does next.
Svetlana Alexievich, Trans. by Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky
Rave The Guardian This is a tough read, both emotionally and intellectually. But it would be hard to find a book that feels more important or original. There’s a visceral anger in Alexievich’s introduction that’s rare in any history book ... Tempting though it is, this is a difficult book to read in one gulp. Alexievich presents this as oral history: fragments of conversation that are not always rooted in specific events and don’t carry the dates of battles next to them. This is an incredibly powerful way of bringing history to life. These women spoke to her as friends and treated her more as confessor than journalist and historian ... Her achievement is as breathtaking as the experiences of these women are awe-inspiring.
Margaret Atwood
Rave The Guardian ...this is written with such gusto and mischief that it feels so much like something Atwood would have written anyway. The joy and hilarity of it just sing off the page. It’s a magical eulogy to Shakespeare, leading the reader through a fantastical reworking of the original but infusing it with ironic nods to contemporary culture, thrilling to anyone who knows The Tempest intimately, but equally compelling to anyone not overly familiar with the work ... riotous, insanely readable and just the best fun.
Julie Myerson
Positive The Guardian This novel is beautifully written and cleverly told. And it’s almost completely terrifying ... It’s the sort of book you cannot put down, partly because it is so addictive and partly because if you do put it down, you know you will spend the next few hours startling at every creaking door. I was immensely relieved when the ride came to an end. It really is unremittingly, heart-stoppingly dark.