“Old God’s Time” by Sebastian Barry

 I enjoyed this very Irish book and read it fairly quickly, despite the dense language and unreliable narrator. I had had no idea that it was about feckin priests, and the descriptions of child (orphan) abuse were quite horrific. 

Basic story… It’s about a retired policeman who was an orphan and physically abused by priests. He fell deeply in love with an orphan girl who was sexually abused by a priest to the extent that her colon was ripped. After their marriage, it seems the priest is going to escape justice despite damming evidence, which is buried by the archbishop. The wife and/or husband stabs the priest to death and throws him down a ravine. They have 2 beautiful children, whom they vow to protect. Wife commits suicide by burning herself up in the park. This act causes the children to die due to addiction and escaping to the States where murder awaits. Most probably, the policeman commits suicide at the end, after finally achieving atonement. Not surprisingly, the book contains hints of Job’s story.

“There But For The” by Ali Smith

 I have to say that I ended up disliking this book by an acclaimed author.

I learned very little about the man, Miles, who locked himself in the room. I enjoyed the description of the unpleasant dinner party, and of significant life events of several people connected to Miles. But the last section of the book, about the very smart little black girl, Brooke, totally took me out of the story. The entire section, including the numerous puns and historical references, did nothing for me. It felt contrived and pretentious.

“The Apollo Murders” by Chris Hadfield

 I found this book almost unreadable and skipped 90% of it. To me, it’s written from the point of view of a slightly arrogant robot. Too much fact, not enough substance.

“The Hunter” by Tana French

 Some errors in the writing style near the beginning of the book turned me off the author, even though I was enjoying the book itself. However, as the book progressed, she stopped using cheap American colloquialisms in her descriptions, and her frequent mention of a yellow plant fell to the background, so I ended up quite enjoying the story. It consisted of a missing youth, a retired cop from Chicago, and an apparently ‘sweet’  village in Ireland. The characters were quite well developed and I liked the greyness of their moral decisions. It seemed true to life.

“Lullabies for Little Criminals” by Heather O’Neill

This book is an amazingly realistic account of a 12 year old street child, Baby, with a drug-taking and irrational but loving father, Jules. She is very bright, but due to decisions by adults, becomes a drug taking prostitute living with her pimp. Some parts were so difficult to read that I had to skim them.

As in most Heather O’Neill novels, the story takes place in Montreal, a setting which I enjoy. And as in all the Heather O’Neill novels I have read, there is an uplifting ending. Thank god for cousin Janine in Val de Loups. 

"To Speak for the Trees" by Diana Beresford-Kroeger

I enjoyed the early sections of the book, which dealt with the author's early life in Ireland and then her move to Canada. Her bloodline is very blue, she was orphaned at an early age and instructed by Druids. She encountered misogyny in her Canadian research posts, even though she was highly intelligent.

The latter part of the book, which dealt specifically with trees, climatr change etc did not interest me. I skimmed it.

“The Downloaded” by Robert J. Sawyer

I enjoyed the 1st half of the book. It was a straightforward SF story that included murder and a deadly meteor heading towards an earth that had already been devastated by a nuclear war, which destroyed all technology. Only non technological Mennonites in the Waterloo area seemed to have survived. A group of criminal and scientists woke up to this scenario, after having been frozen for hundreds of years, with their brains uploaded into a quantum computer that had provided them with a simulated reality. They were soon approached by the hologram of a Martian, the result of earth’s colonization of Mars.

I lost interest in the story when it was revealed that the Martian had been assessing the revived astronauts and convicts to see if they were suitable for Martian  society. What a cliche! Of course, they weren’t good enough for living with the Martians,  and the people who chose to go to Mars were kindly given a separate living dome. Basically, the story became a shallow sociological and ethical treatise and I began noticing plot holes. How could an advanced society not have noticed a huge rock heading towards earth much earlier? (The author says they weren’t looking in that direction. Sheesh.) How in the world can you transfer consciousness into a computer? What even is consciousness? Boring!