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What books are you reading?

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rjbull:


'[Vyleta is] the heir to the throne left empty since
the death of Graham Greene. Yes, he's that damn good'
SAN FRANCISCO BOOK REVIEW

Vienna, 1939. Professor Speckstein's dog has been brutally killed and
he wants to know why. But these are uncharitable times and one must
be careful where one probes... When an unexpected house call leads
Doctor Beer to Speckstein's apartment, he finds himself in the bedroom
of Zuzka, the professor's niece. Wide-eyed, flirtatious and not detectably
ill, Zuzka leads the young doctor to her window and reveals a disturbing
view of the neighbours across the courtyard. Does one of them have
blood on their hands? Beer reluctantly becomes embroiled in an
enquiry that forces him to face the dark realities of Nazi rule.

'Nimble, nuanced, fierce, scrupulous' TLS

'A compelling rumination on watching and watchfulness,
served up with Nabokovian glee' GUARDIAN

'Truly a work of art ... one of the best — and most quietly
disturbing — books of the year' NATIONAL POST

'A sharp and confident novel that captures the social
paranoia and mistrust fomented by Nazism ... Vyleta's
subtly engaging thriller is tense with violent acts'
INDEPENDENT

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panzer:

mouser:
i think that was made into a movie ive seen.

40hz:
Fifth-Business by Robertson Davies. Book one of three linked novels forming what's since come to be referred to as: "The Deptford Trilogy." The other two related books are The Manticore and The World of Wonders.

A very different take on the "coming of age" novel. If you enjoyed books like Slaughterhouse-Five, this book should appeal. Davies is a fine wordsmith. There's tons of quotable passages throughout. By example:

I have already said that while our village contained much of what humanity has to show, it did not contain everything, and one of the things it conspicuously lacked was an aesthetic sense; we were all too much descendants of hard-bitten pioneers to wish for or encourage any such thing, and we gave hard names to qualities that, in a more sophisticated society, might have had value.
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From the publisher's blurb (which sums it up rather well):

Ramsay is a man twice born, a man who has returned from the hell of the battle-grave at Passchendaele in World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross and destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and myth collide. As Ramsay tells his story, it begins to seem that from boyhood, he has exerted a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious, influence on those around him. His apparently innocent involvement in such innocuous events as the throwing of a snowball or the teaching of card tricks to a small boy in the end prove neither innocent nor innocuous.  Fifth Business stands alone as a remarkable story told by a rational man who discovers that the marvelous is only another aspect of the real.
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Recommended! :Thmbsup:

kunkel321:


https://books.google.com/books?id=34wClsOmBIoC&hl=en
Half way though.... It's pretty good!

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