Book review: Life after life : a novel, by Jill McCorkle. I wanted to read this book as the author went to my college, Hollins University, in Roanoke, Virginia. I borrowed it from the Vineland Public Library (FIC McCorkle Jill). Unfortunately, there is another book with the same title out right now. Maybe because I am reading too many books at one time, I had trouble keeping the characters straight in this one. The characters are all residents or workers in a retirement home. There is the narrative which jumps around to all of the different characters. In between the chapters are inserts about other people and little segments by those people. They all seem to be people known by one of the characters, Joanna, who is a volunteer at the nursing home. I liked the character who was just faking alzheimers so that his son wouldn't bother him.
Book review: Tuesday's gone, by Nicci French. I borrowed this book from the Vineland Public Library (MYS French Nicci). I learned from the flap that this name "is the pseudonym of the internationally bestselling writing partnership of suspense writers Nicci Gerrard and Sean French".
It is the second novel in the Frieda Klein series and ended sort of mysteriously, leaving room for more books. Our investigator is referred to as a "brilliant reclusive psychotherapist". She assists the investigation into who might have killed a man who seems to have insinuated himself into the lives of quite a few people with money. He was a different man to each of them. Frieda tries to figure out who is telling the truth and who did what to whom and when. London milieu.
Book review: L'étranger, by Albert Camus. Quite proud of myself as I read this book in French. It is not really difficult, being a rather short book. Had to read it for a book club so I even took notes. I know I read it long ago when I majored in French. This copy came on interlibrary loan from the Matawan-Aberdeen Public Library in Matawan, New Jersey (FRE CAMUS). This first lines are quite famous and can be recited by many people, especially French majors. "Aujourd'hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-ètre hier, je ne sais pas". (Today, mother died. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know).
The quintessential existentialist novel is about a man who drifts through life, getting into trouble after murdering an arab who is threatening his friend. During the court trial, it comes out that he didn't cry at his mother's funeral and this adds to the damning evidence against him. Waiting to see if he is condemned to death, he philosophizes that we are all condemned to death eventually. And thinks that his mother was about to start a new life with a fiancé so no one should have cried over her. I can't find the cover of my Gallimard 1942 paperback, but here is the link if you would like to read it.
