Esi Edugyan?

[Uncle 3 dogs]

Anyone read her two books?

The Second Life of Samuel Tyne

and

Half Blood Blues

The first one is a kind of novel I seldom get past half a dozen pages into: Little plot and it's very dark and it takes place inside the head of one man. In this case, however, she is so good with language that I found it fascinating. I find it incredible that a 30 year old woman is able to write so convincingly from the point of view of a 60 year old man.

Half Blood Bluesis more conventional in that there is actually a plot, but, again, she brings the characters to life in a way that makes me actually care about them. I'm not surprised this book won the Giller. It's great!

I can hardly wait until this young woman publishes another novel.

Edited April 13, 2012 by Uncle 3 dogs

[cybercoma]

I want to read Half-Blood Blues, but I can't get it on Kobo and I hate pirating books. Authors have a hard enough time as it is making a living.

Right now I'm reading Blackout by Connie Willis. It won both the Hugo and Nebula scifi awards. The former is an award selected by publishers and authors, while the latter is fan picked. It's not rare that a book receives both, but it doesn't happen all that frequently either. It's about historians at Oxford in the year 2060. They're able to do field research by travelling through time. Much of the historical events take place during WWII, so I'm not as into the book as I could be. I like scifi and I like history, but I'm not much of a war historian. My main interests are with the histories of gender, race, health, medicine, and disease. It's a decent read so far, but I'm not totally blown away by it. I'm hoping it's just slow to start.

[Black Dog]

Didn't care for HBB. Found it all style and no substance.