Latest read
Havoc by Christopher Bollen Publication: December 3, 2024; Harper, NetGalley
Genre: suspense literary fiction, noir mystery, Egypt
My review:
Eighty-something year old Maggie returns to the Hotel Karnak on the banks of the Nile to live out the rest of her life, but then meets an unlikely eight-year-old, Otto, a guest with his mother at the hotel, who gets in the way of her lifestyle and unusual hobby. Maggie is a self-made love arbitrator who has decided on the sly to interfere in couples' lives and engineer their break up when she thinks someone in the marriage is or will be unhappy.
Otto has witnessed Maggie at work, when he sees her leaving false trails that led to the break up of a family in the hotel. He decides to play cat and mouse with Maggie throughout the book and is diabolical in getting back at her when she doesn't give in to his blackmail for video games and expensive items for his mother.
A dark tale of warring minds, old versus young, both getting ever more desperate, until the two seem to go off track. It was hard to believe that an eight year old could be so diabolical, but then I'm reminded this is fiction and Maggie is equally wicked. The last page of the book left me wondering if Otto intended such an ending. The Egyptian god of disorder, violence, and foreigners in Egypt, Set, who is mentioned in the book, seems to reign over these two opponents.
It was an engrossing noir read, leaving the reader wondering during the book, what craziness will they have in store for each other next?
At the library
A modern day spy thriller
The Expat: A Novel by Hansen Shi ( Pegasus Crime, July 2, 2024)
Description: Piercingly intelligent and ruthlessly contemporary, The Expat: A Novel is both a white-knuckle spy novel and a thrilling exploration of the myth of meritocracy, high-tech immigration, U.S.-China conflicts, identity, and disaffection.
Princeton graduate, Michael Wang finds himself enmeshed in a dangerous web of industrial
espionage and counterintelligence when he goes to China for an engineering job in the auto industry. Caught between two countries that
view him as a pawn, where do his loyalties lie? (publisher)
Young women in China trying to make it in the new economy
Private Revolutions: Four Women Face China's New Social Order by Yuan Yang
Published July 2, 2024, Viking
Genre: women's history, nonfiction, Communism and socialism
Description: A sweeping yet intimate portrait of modern
China told through the lives of four ordinary women striving for a
better future in a highly unequal society
While serving as the deputy Beijing bureau chief of the Financial Times,
Chinese-British journalist Yuan Yang began to notice common threads in
the lives of her Chinese peers—women born during China’s turn toward
capitalism in the 1980s and 1990s, who, despite the country's enormous
economic gains during their lifetimes, were coming up against deeply
entrenched barriers as they sought to achieve financial stability.
The book traces the journey of four such women as they try to make better lives for themselves and their families in the new Chinese economy.
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