Ru by Kim Thuy ****

Winner of Canada Reads 2015, a short read but very poetic, very intense. 

The Night Stages by Jane Urquhart ***

I was excited to purchase this and read it, because the setting was both Ireland and Newfoundland, and it was a family saga. It went a lot deeper than that, and I ended up somewhat bored by it all, but not enough to not continue until the whole novel was read.

There are two brothers, Naill and Kieran, Tam, who flew planes to various locations for the military during the war and who is Naill's mistress, Gerry- Anne, the Irish woman who raises Kieran after his mother dies and she is the only one who can calm down his rages of anger, Susan, Naill's wife. Tam is sitting inGander airport, having left Naill, and there she spends three days looking at a mural painted by the Canadian artist Kenneth Lochhead. We are taken into his preparation for this mural, too, although I'm not entirely convinced of its necessity in the plot.

So it gets three stars. She is a good writer, though, so maybe another half star for that!

The Love Story of Miss Queenie Hennessey: A Novel by Rachel Joyce *****

What a beautiful novel! This is the Queenie from The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, the woman who Harold was walking to see after twenty years. Queenie fills  in a lot of the background to the first novel, as we learn all about her, how she met Harold, her relationship with Harold's troubled son, her illness, her fellow patients at the hospice where she now resides. And there is a lovely surprise at the end, too. I just loved this!

The Clifton Chronicles: The Sins of the Father by Jeffrey Archer

Volume two, also read in two days, is mainly concerned with the struggle to determine whether Hugo Bannerman, a thoroughly despicable person, is Harry's father. Emma travels to New York to try and locate Harry, who has been jailed for murder because he took on the name of another man.

We certainly have the good guys and the bad guys in these novels, but everything seems a bit predictable, and just when you think something bad will happen to one of the characters, some implausible escape from disaster is at hand.

These are entertaining enough, and I'll probably read the other two books in the series, but I haven't found anything to really chew on.

The Clifton Chronicles: Only Time Will Tell by Jeffrey Archer ****

This was recommended to me by Sandy Weeks, and I read this first volume in two days. It's an easy read, but a good story, told by Maisie Clifton, her son Harry, Hugo Barrington, who may be Harry's father, Giles Barrington, who is Harry's best friend,and Emma Barrington, the woman he falls in love with, old Jack Tar, Harry's friend from the dockyards and his mentor.

The plot is also good, with lots of angles, and even though I wish Joyce Carol Oates had written this, because it would have been deeper and darker, I was thoroughly entertained.

On the volume two, The Sins Of The Father.

They Left Us Everything: A Memoir. By Plum Johnson ***

This is a memoir of a family who lived in a huge old house in Oakville.  The book won this year's RBC award The Taylor Prize for best non- fiction writing, and I heard the author interviewed on CBC- sounded interesting so I downloaded the book.

It was interesting enough, and the story of the parents was intriguing, but it certainly wasn't earth- shattering. Basically a normal family, although the parents were quite colourful people.

Travelling to Infinity ( The True Story behind "The Theory of Everything" by Jane Hawkings *****

This was a wonderful memoir of Jane's life with Stephen Hawking, who is probably the greatest scientific genius of modern times, and who has suffered from motor- neuron disease, known in North America as ALS since he was in his 20s. 

If I had seen that the print was as small as it was, I might not have purchased the book, and at 479 pages of text, it was sometimes demanding physically to read it, but I thoroughly enjoyed every single page. It is a clear, honest depiction of the duties of a caregiver, and in Jane's case, those duties fell on her shoulders from before their marriage through the births and growth of their three children, all the while trying to fulfill her own academic goals, not to mention the high level of care required around the clock for her husband, whose celebrity had several adverse effects on their lives: people thought they were rich, so didn't need assistance, Stephen himself naturally enough bathed in the glow of this celebrity and the knowledge that he was the center of everyone's attention,,so that Jane felt herself just to be a caregiver, and in the opinion of his family and the nurses who eventually took over his care, not a good caregiver. 

There was an interesting dynamic in this family, with the musician Jonathon - I don't think we're ever told his last name- becoming a part of the family, and actually a godsend to Jane, whose emotional and physical well-being were somewhat restored by his inclusion. 

Probably one of the best memoirs I've ever read.

I reread this for Book Club , November 14, 2015. I found Jane a little harder to take in this reading. I think she should have stood up to Stephen a little earlier, and I feel she became very bitter towards everyone as time went on. Considering her relationship with Jonathon, I think she should have welcomed Elaine's involvement with open arms.