WE KNOW IT WAS YOU
By Maggie Thrash
Can’t wait for the Twin Peaks revival next year?
Treat yourself to the mysterious demise of
another high school sweetheart, Brittany
Montague, who, on a Friday night, while the
whole school is celebrating the football game,
jumps off a bridge to her death in the river.
No one can believe this has happened, and
so Mystery Club team members Benny and
Virginia don’t waste a minute believing it—
because they saw Brittany jumping off that
bridge, and also the man standing next to her.
We Know It Was You mixes teen drama
with fast-paced intrigue, leading the reader
on a trail of hints and half truths that will unveil
a reality far more unsettling than what you
would expect from an average Americanhigh school. The pivotal question is: Who killed
Brittany Montague?SWING TIME
By Zadie Smith
Two mixed race girls in the 1980s. Then,
the same two, now grown women, in today’s
London, coping with life, struggling with the
burdens and failures generated by their own
passions. Through an intimate first-person
narration, jumping back and forth in time to
trace all the individual, familial and class
differences that brought the two childhood
friends from being sister-like close to being
almost strangers, Swing Time captures the essence
of same-sex friendship with all its nuances
of loyalty and jealousy, thoughtfulness and
competition. Smith takes the chance to touch
on a number of social issues such as race, class
and cultural appropriation, which take a more
realistic turn when, in the second half of the
book, the action shifts to Gambia, and the
narrator is exposed to all the dynamics that
characterised her life, but on a much wider scale.FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM
by J. K. Rowling
Three years ago, no one would have believed
a new instalment of the Harry Potter saga would
soon see the light of day – let alone two in
a single year. After Harry Potter and the Cursed
Child premiered as a West End play and a play’s
script of the same name was released last July,
November 2016 was once again a month of
celebration for millions of fans around the globe.
Following the theatrical release of Fantastic Beasts
and Where To Find Them, bookshops worldwide
have been taken by storm by Rowling’s
screenwriting debut, which takes readers back
in time and far from Hogwarts, following
magizoologist Newt Scamander in a prequel
adventure set in 1920s New York.| BOOKSON THE SHELVES36 February 2017123RF“FREEDOM IS THE RIGHT
TO TELL PEOPLE
WHAT THEY DO NOT
WANT TO HEAR”
- GEORGE ORWELL
READ
NEW READS
JERUSALEM
By Alan Moore
Twenty years after his first novel, graphic
novel master Alan Moore hits the shelves
again with exactly what you’d expect from
him: a massive, over 6,00,000-word-long
epic tale about pretty much everything,
but, more specifically, about “poverty,
wealth, history, madness, ghosts, and the
confusion of dreams, visions, memories,
and premonitions.” Longer than The Bible,
Jerusalem is set in Northampton, the author’s
hometown, and develops over the centuries,
combining a variety of writing styles –
Samuel Beckett’s and James Joyce’s, among
others – and literary genres (magical realism
and fictionalised history, for instance)
to explore, through a wide roster of
characters, Moore’s experiences, ideas,
and philosophy of life.THE WONDER
By Emma Donoghue
Lib, a young English nurse, and her young
patient, 11-year-old Anna, who allegedly
has lived without touching food for months,
are stuck within the four walls of a room,
waiting for the truth to come out. Is the
little girl a moneymaking hoax or is she truly
a miracle child? Room, Donoghue’s most
acclaimed novel, became a sensation a year
ago when it was made into a feature film,
earning Brie Larson an Academy Award.
So it comes as no surprise that The Wonder,
the plot of which once again revolves
around a child, was one of the most
anticipated books this fall. Fans looking for
the claustrophobic atmosphere of Room
won’t be disappointed, for The Wonder
has it all: a kid and an adult trapped inside
a room, surrounded by a sense of abuse and
helplessness, and an added twist of mystery.WORDS: NICOLO GOVONI32 February 2017