2022/68: The Godmother -- Hannelore Cayre, translated by Stephanie Smee

2022/68: The Godmother -- Hannelore Cayre, translated by Stephanie Smee

You may call us wops, vulgar foreigners, outsiders – but tremble, good people, for we shall crush you all! [loc. 1933]

Patience Portefeux, 53 years old and a widow, works as a French-Arabic translator for the Department of Justice, specialising in phone taps. She has two grown daughters at university to support, and retirement home fees for her mother to pay: there's never quite enough money. ( Read more... )

2022/69: Villager -- Tom Cox

2022/69: Villager -- Tom Cox

I feel it all getting under the cotton and passing through me -- the sun, the butterflies, the maybugs, the tune of the water, the breeze, the falling light -- and I am the moment and nothing more. [p. 231]

I helped to crowdfund this book, Cox's first novel, and I feel suitably rewarded by getting to read it! The narrative takes the form of interconnected stories set in a fictional Dartmoor-ish village, Underhill. ( Read more... )