Bookbot

Lucie van Rooijen Livres

    Holy Cow
    February
    Golden Hill
    Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery: Death in a Strange Country
    Le Palais de verre
    On Rue Tatin
    • On Rue Tatin

      Living and Cooking in a French Town

      • 320pages
      • 12 heures de lecture

      The author recounts her transformative journey in Paris over two decades, starting with minimal resources and evolving into a rich life filled with culinary adventures and cultural experiences. Through vivid storytelling, she shares her love for French cuisine, the friendships forged, and the lessons learned in a city that became her home. The narrative highlights the challenges and joys of adapting to a new culture, ultimately celebrating the beauty of life in Paris.

      On Rue Tatin
      3,9
    • Le Palais de verre

      • 633pages
      • 23 heures de lecture

      Tchécoslovaquie, années 1920. Le pays se relève à peine de la guerre : il s'agit d'oublier. De reconstruire. En faisant ériger, sur leurs terres, le Palais de verre, le jeune couple Landauer participe de cette utopie radieuse : la maison, tout en lignes pures et matière transparente, abritera leur amour. Un espoir des temps nouveaux. Hélas, une ombre plane sur l'Europe. Le couple s'use, l'idéal s'abîme et le monde devient fou. Ne restent bientôt plus que des éclats de rêve.

      Le Palais de verre
      3,9
    • Golden Hill

      • 352pages
      • 13 heures de lecture

      I've no history here, and no character: and what I am, is all in what I will be...

      Golden Hill
      3,7
    • February

      • 310pages
      • 11 heures de lecture

      Winner of Canada Reads 2013 and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize In 1982, the oil rig Ocean Ranger sank off the coast of Newfoundland during a Valentine's Day storm. All eighty-four men aboard died. February is the story of Helen O'Mara, one of those left behind when her husband, Cal, drowns on the rig. It begins in the present-day, more than twenty-five years later, but spirals back again and again to the "February" that persists in Helen's mind and heart. Writing at the peak of her form, her steadfast refusal to sentimentalize coupled with an almost shocking ability to render the precise details of her characters' physical and emotional worlds, Lisa Moore gives us her strongest work yet. Here is a novel about complex love and cauterizing grief, about past and present and how memory knits them together, about a fiercely close community and its universal struggles, and finally about our need to imagine a future, no matter how fragile, before we truly come home. This is a profound, gorgeous, heart-stopping work from one of our best writers.

      February
      3,4
    • Holy Cow

      • 304pages
      • 11 heures de lecture

      In her twenties, journalist Sarah Macdonald backpacked around India and came away with a lasting impression of heat, pollution and poverty. So when an airport beggar read her palm and told her she would return to India—and for love—she screamed, “Never!” and gave the country, and him, the finger.But eleven years later, the prophecy comes true. When the love of Sarah’s life is posted to India, she quits her dream job to move to the most polluted city on earth, New Delhi. For Sarah this seems like the ultimate sacrifice for love, and it almost kills her, literally. Just settled, she falls dangerously ill with double pneumonia, an experience that compels her to face some serious questions about her own fragile mortality and inner spiritual void. “I must find peace in the only place possible in India,” she concludes. “Within.” Thus begins her journey of discovery through India in search of the meaning of life and death.Holy Cow is Macdonald’s often hilarious chronicle of her adventures in a land of chaos and contradiction, of encounters with Hinduism, Islam and Jainism, Sufis, Sikhs, Parsis and Christians and a kaleidoscope of yogis, swamis and Bollywood stars. From spiritual retreats and crumbling nirvanas to war zones and New Delhi nightclubs, it is a journey that only a woman on a mission to save her soul, her love life—and her sanity—can survive.

      Holy Cow
      3,6
    • Warlight

      • 304pages
      • 11 heures de lecture

      In a narrative as mysterious as memory itself – at once both shadowed and luminous – Warlight is a vivid, thrilling novel of violence and love, intrigue and desire. It is 1945, and London is still reeling from the Blitz and years of war. 14-year-old Nathaniel and his sister, Rachel, are apparently abandoned by their parents, left in the care of an enigmatic figure named The Moth. They suspect he might be a criminal, and grow both more convinced and less concerned as they get to know his eccentric crew of friends: men and women with a shared history, all of whom seem determined now to protect, and educate (in rather unusual ways) Rachel and Nathaniel. But are they really what and who they claim to be? A dozen years later, Nathaniel begins to uncover all he didn’t know or understand in that time, and it is this journey – through reality, recollection, and imagination – that is told in this magnificent novel

      Warlight
      3,6
    • As the world changes, a family navigates the complexities of growing up, aging, and the ebb and flow of love, loss, and resilience. In a cozy Brooklyn brownstone, the facade of domestic happiness begins to crumble. Dan and Isabel, a troubled couple, find themselves both drawn to Isabel’s younger brother, Robbie, a free spirit living in the attic. As Robbie grapples with heartbreak and an online persona, his impending departure threatens to fracture the family. Meanwhile, ten-year-old Nathan takes tentative steps toward independence, while five-year-old Violet tries to ignore the widening chasm between her parents. As the world enters lockdown in 2020, the brownstone feels more like a prison. Violet becomes fixated on safety, fearing the outside world, while Nathan pushes against her rules. Isabel and Dan communicate through thinly veiled frustrations, and Robbie finds himself isolated in Iceland, alone with his thoughts and a secret online life. By 2021, as the family emerges from the crisis, they confront a transformed reality, reflecting on their losses and what they’ve learned. This poignant narrative explores the intricacies of love, loss, and the challenges of family life, revealing how to coexist both together and apart.

      Day
      3,5
    • "In an alternate version of 1893 America, New York is part of the Free States, where people may live and love whomever they please (or so it seems). The fragile young scion of a distinguished family resists betrothal to a worthy suitor, drawn to a charming music teacher of no means. In a 1993 Manhattan besieged by the AIDS epidemic, a young Hawaiian man lives with his much older, wealthier partner, hiding his troubled childhood and the fate of his father. And in 2093, in a world riven by plagues and governed by totalitarian rule, a powerful scientist's damaged granddaughter tries to navigate life without him - and solve the mystery of her husband's disappearances. These three sections are joined in an enthralling and ingenious symphony, as recurring notes and themes deepen and enrich one another: A townhouse in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village; illness, and treatments that come at a terrible cost; wealth and squalor; the weak and the strong; race; the definition of family, and of nationhood; the dangerous righteousness of the powerful, and of revolutionaries; the longing to find a place in an earthly paradise, and the gradual realization that it can't exist. What unites not just the characters, but these Americas, are their reckonings with the qualities that make us human: Fear. Love. Shame. Need. Loneliness."--Publisher

      To Paradise
      3,4