Book Reviews/A Writing Journey
Tag: books
During my travels I was desperate for something to read and was handed Finlay’s book. I’m not a lover of jewels so I approached the book with low expectations. How wrong I was.
This book deals with the history and intrigue behind searching and acquiring jewels from amber, jet and opals to the more expensive emeralds, rubies and diamonds. I was hooked from the first page and fascinated by every fact from this non-fiction gem.
When Shivan prepares to return to Colombo to bring his aging grandmother to Canada, memories of his childhood flood back. He remembers how he was the one forced to befriend the greedy and callous matriarch so his widowed mother and sister would not be kicked out of her house. He suffers her beatings and insults because his grandmother despises his mother for marrying a Tamil and producing two half Tamil children.
Set through an era of political hatred towards the Tamil minority (that still persists to day) and grappling with Shivan’s sexual orientation, this is a story wrought with tension on many levels.
Although Maggie’s mother is French Canadian, Maggie is sent to an English school by her English father. But in spite of her predominantly English up bringing, she falls in love with a poor French boy, Gabriel. At fifteen she discovers she’s pregnant. Pressured by 1950s Quebec’s stance on unwedded mothers and her beloved father’s threat of abandoning her if she keeps the child and has any more to do with Gabriel, Maggie’s child, Elodie is taken from her.
Goodman presents the English/French mistrust in Quebec to perfection and while at times the story is predictable, the experiences of little Elodie’s time in two institutions reflects the horror orphans of that era went through. A compelling read.
In the late 1800s with the support of her father, Mitza Maric leaves her Eastern European home to study physics and math at the Polytechnic in Zurich. She is the only woman in her class where only Albert Einstein, a young student, befriends her. Mtiza is ambitious and a gifted math student, but when she becomes pregnant, her dreams are slowly shattered.
This fascinating tale based on research, makes us question how much of Einstein’s discoveries are accredited to the wrong scientist?
Read and Write 
You must be logged in to post a comment.