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The Moth: This Is a True Story
Edited by Catherine Burns (Profile Books)
***
Book buff
I’m a big fan of The Moth podcasts of true stories told by amateur and professional storytellers. Uplifting, neatly edited and well told, these first person accounts provide moving insight into the lives of others. Fifty of these slices of life are now gathered into a book. But how well do the stories translate from the spoken word to the page? Surprisingly well: like the podcasts, they can become rather “samey” if you consume too many in one sitting, but when spread out, savoured and dipped into, they are a lovely sampling of the rich diversity of human experience.
- Kate Sidley @KateSidley
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All the Light We Cannot See
Anthony Doerr (Fourth Estate)
Book buff
****
The multi-layered plot follows several characters through World War 2, focusing mainly on Marie-Laure, a blind girl living in Paris, and Werner, a German orphan. Before war breaks out, Marie-Laure’s loving father builds her a mini-replica of their neighbourhood to help her learn to navigate, while Werner’s aptitude for engineering wins him a spot at a military academy – where he struggles with the violence but feels he must comply. Doerr skilfully pulls together several threads in this engrossing book. His writing is both expansive and meticulously detailed.
- Lindsay Callaghan @lindsaycal
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Flying Shoes
Lisa Howorth (Bloomsbury)
****
Book thrill
This is a fictionalised account of the author seeking resolution over her nine-year-old brother’s unsolved murder. Howorth writes herself as Mary Byrd Thornton, an eccentric woman living in Mississippi whose life choices are determined by guilt: she was 15, making out with her boyfriend in a car parked a few metres away, when her brother was killed. Now, 48 years later, the police have a new lead and she reluctantly has to remember what happened. The beauty in the writing is in Mary Byrd’s ramblings on her day-to-day life in the US south, distracting herself from her memories.
- Jennifer Platt @Jenniferdplatt
Book details
- The Moth: This is a True Story edited by Catherine Burns
EAN: 9781846689895
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- All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
EAN: 9780007548675
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- Flying Shoes by Lisa Howorth
EAN: 9781620403037
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