The connecting line
Kate Allen: The Line Tender (Penguin Random House 2019) One summer day, the first great white shark arrived in Rockport. This sets off a chain of events. Lucy and her best friend Fred are working on a summer school assignment. Lucy draws very well, and Fred is interested in all things scientific. The shark reminds everyone of Lucy’s marine biologist mother, who researched sharks until one day she suddenly died. In Rockport, everyone’s life is connected to the sea. Lucy’s father is a detective, but he also dives and helps the lifeguards. After another tragedy, Lucy becomes interested in her mother’s last project and visits her old colleagues to understand the purpose and importance of the research. Lucy is the link and comfort for those close to her. The theme of the book is sad: it deals with loss, yet it is hopeful. It shows how we can overcome difficult…
The brand new heart of Sunny St. James
Ashley Herring Blake: The Mighty Heart of Sunny St. James (Little, Brown & Company 2020) When Sunny St. James gets a new heart, she decides that her life will be different from this moment on. She makes a plan: 1) she will do amazing things she never dared to or cannot do before; 2) find a new best friend; and 3) she finally kisses a boy. But when she executes the first two steps of her plan, with the help of her new best friend Quinn, Sunny questions whether she really wants to kiss a boy. The situation is complicated by the return of her mother, who left her daughter with her best friend 8 years ago because she was an alcoholic. Now she also wants to start a new life. Meanwhile, Sunny starts writing songs to process what is happening inside and around her. This is a very sensitively…
The strange life of writers
Lily King: Writers & Lovers (Grove/Atlantic Inc. 2020) Many thanks to 21. Szazad Kiadó for sending me the book! Casey is 31 years old and she recently lost her mother. Until now, she has lived a nomadic life: since university, she has moved 11 times and had 17 jobs, but now, after the death of her mother, she feels truly stateless, despite returning to Massachusetts. Due to her loans, she has a debt of 73 thousand dollars and lives in a miserable sublet. She is estranged from her father, her brother lives far away, and her friends keep getting married or stop writing, just as one recovers from an illness. She writes in the morning and works as a waiter in the afternoon and evening. Her love life is in ruins, but now she has also met two men: the young Silas and the established writer Oscar, who is a…
Beautiful World, Where Are You
Sally Rooney: Beautiful World, Where Are You (Faber & Faber 2021) Many thanks to 21. Század Kiadó for sending me the book! Sally Rooney was born in 1991 in a small Irish town, Castlebar. Her poems were already published during her high school years. She went to college in Dublin: she studied English literature and politics, then graduated with a master’s degree in American literature. She wrote her first book, Conversations with Friends, during an exam period, then the book was published in 2017 and was immediately nominated for several awards, and the writer was chosen as the young writer of the year. A year later, Normal People was published, which brought her worldwide fame. It won the title of Irish Novel of the Year and has since been translated to 46 languages. It was published in Hungary in 2020. Before the publication of the third novel, the British publisher…
Bests of 2022
I read a lot of good books in 2022. My favorite book was The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera. The story completely captivated me. I read it twice right away and I can’t wait for the author’s next book. I also really liked A Comb of Wishes by Lisa Stringfellow which has a serious, touching theme, and the LGBTQIA+ Answers in the Pages by David Levithan, which got me interested in contemporary fiction. Phil Hickes’ Aveline Jones series also became my favorite, not because the story is exciting and a little scary, but because it is very nice. In 2022, I got to know Flavia Sorrentino’s illustrations and I was completely enchanted. I even started collecting the books illustrated by her. I couldn’t ignore Robin Stevens’ Murder Most Unladylike series further, so I started reading the volumes of the series after it was published in Hungary. The second volume…
New Year’s Resolutions
Lucie Hoornaert: La Grande et Folle Histoire des vêtements (The Great and Crazy Story of Clothing* Marmaille et compagnie 2018) Dr. Erika Kuthy: Spanish Exercises for Every Day* (Maxim Könyvkiadó 2021) Many thanks to Maxim Könyvkiadó for the language learning book! This year I finally want to read in French again. I have studied the language before, but I haven’t practiced it in a long time. I hope that La Grande et Folle Histoire des vêtements by Lucie Hornaert will help me in this. I noticed the book because of Flavia Sorrentino’s illustrations, in which we can follow the history of clothing in time (from prehistoric times to the present day) and in space (in Europe and around the world). We can learn about different materials and patterns, styles and why we like to dress up. An ideal read for children and language learners, which is a work of art…
My Christmas presents 2022
Dan Gemeinhart: The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise (Palgrave 2020) Coyote lost her mother and her sisters five years ago. Since then, she and her father have been traveling the country in a school bus. Now, however she wants to take her father home, since she just learned that the park next to their old home, where she and her mother buried a memory box is about to be demolished. Along the 3,600 mile journey, they are accompanied by a very mixed group, all looking for happiness. Kate Allen: The Line Tender (Puffin Books 2020) Lucy’s mother was an ocean biologist researching sharks, but since she disappeared at sea, the little girl and her father prefer to live on land. But this summer brings a big change to Rockport’s life. In order for Lucy to move on, she must grasp the line that connects her depressed father, a stubborn fisherman…
The cherry tree
Paola Peretti: La distanza tra me e il ciliegio (The Distance Between Me and the Cherry Tree, originally published by the Rizzoli Libri Milano in 2018) Many thanks to Maxim Könyvkiadó for sending me the book! Mafalda is a nine-year-old girl who has many dreams-and-desires for what she still wants to do. Unfortunately, however, a cloud is growing in her eyes, which the doctor calls Stargardt syndrome. In a few months it will completely fill her eyes and she will remain in the dark. Until then, Mafalda takes care of the things she can no longer do in the dark and decides to move up to the cherry tree in the school yard, into which her grandmother’s soul also moved. Every day, she counts how many steps away from the tree it takes for her to still see the cherry tree (the title of the novel comes from here). In…