March 2008

Here's the thing: if I tell you this title nods to Bridget Jones's Diary and the first line pays homage to Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, you've got the whole book in a nutshell. Yaël Koppman starts keeping a journal because... well, that's where the story begins.

Three wealthy Americans board a train crossing India—the Darjeeling Limited. They're brothers who haven't seen each other in a year. The eldest, Francis, orchestrated this trip to reconnect, to rebuild something that broke. Family stuff. Baggage. Literal and otherwise.

It's spring! (I swear it is.) Birds are chirping, trees are blooming, and... choirs are singing! My choir Voix-si Voix-la is performing April 6th at Espace des Blancs Manteaux in Paris. Come if you can. I'll be the one trying not to mess up the harmonies.

Tardieu returns to her favorite theme: disappearance, absence, the grief that never resolves. Alice was five when she lost her mother. "Lost" is the right word—it took her years to understand what that really meant. Some losses you can't process at five.

Seems like after The Housekeeper and the Professor, Ogawa left her fantastical universe behind. But she kept her obsessions: memory, collections, eccentricity. Tomoko is twelve and spending a year somewhere unexpected. Classic Ogawa territory.

Strange coincidence: lately I keep reading books and watching films about overcoming prejudice. This one fits that pattern. Esther is paraplegic, wheelchair-bound, her life permanently altered. What comes next when everything changes?

I love Philippe Claudel as a writer, so I was dying to see his first film. The trailer's been taunting me for weeks at my favorite cinema. Rushed to see it before reading any reviews. Wanted to form my own opinion first. Smart move.

Knud is a Danish kid living on an island. Dull, boring place. But his life is hell for one reason only: his mother is German. This is post-war Denmark where "German" equals enemy. Where a child pays for his mother's nationality every single day.

Valentine's Day in a Midwest town. Sherry Seymour finds an anonymous card: "Be mine forever." Suddenly this lit professor feels something stir inside her. Strange, because Sherry's life seems perfectly settled. Until it isn't.

St. Patrick's Day special. I've read three Johnston novels before. The last one disappointed me—felt like she was repeating herself. But she's Irish and it's March 17th, so here we are. Sometimes you honor tradition even when you're not entirely sure why.