Star Jumps

Hmm, is it wrong to read a book about drought whilst sitting in a bath? I suspect it is. Morally reprehensible at the very least, if not full on wrong. It wasn't a dry bath, there was water in it. I didn't realise that was what I was going to be doing tonight it must be said. I decided to have a bath, I had Star Jumps out from the library and it looked like a perfect bath sized snack. And it was.

I've become very fond of verse novels over the past few years, I really can't fully explain it as I'm so terrible at reading poetry. Of course, the reading speed is great, it's not that often that I can knock over a book in a day- I've been known to fall asleep reading a picture book...

I'd been meaning to read Star Jumps for years, probably since it won the Prime Ministers Literary Award for Children's Fiction in 2010 (the first time that a Children's category was included).

Star Jumps is the story of a dairy farming family told in first person by the youngest of the three children, Ruby. Ruby is young enough to not remember a day of rain, she has grown up in drought and knows nothing else.

There is something we don't understand,

 as if we were just kids,

grubby in old clothes,

playing in weeds,

with a dog that doesn't scare strangers 

and cows that want to die 

instead 

of making milk. 

The cows, the farm and the family are all doing it tough because of the drought. Star Jumps is about the ties that bind, making your own fun, and coming together in the hard times. Themes that would be familiar to any rural family, and many urban families, but with less cows. 

Lorraine Marwood is an Australian poet and author, and was a dairy farmer herself for many years, and this definitely shows in her depth of understanding of farming, of the practicalities and the hardships. But she kept saying that the newborn calves were baaing.

The gentle baaing from the five new calves

I'm confused. Do calves baa?

I am probably more annoyed than I should be that the kid on the cover is doing a handstand and not a star jump. Otherwise I do like the image of the cover.


Teacher's Notes for Star Jumps

http://australianwomenwriters.com

A Year in Books 2018

I'm very late even starting to look back at 2018, which is quite apt really. I had a bad reading year, and a slow blogging year in 2018. Which is not to say that I didn't enjoy things, I just didn't get all that much done. I did delve (possibly too much) into the fabulous world of Booktube, which made me excited about lots of books and audiobooks but didn't leave me with much time to get them read or listened to. I need to temper that this year. 

Goodreads tells me that I read 55 books and 10,650 pages in 2018, although I suspect this doesn't include the 600ish pages I read of Les Mis as I failed to finish it. That is perhaps my biggest disappointment of 2018- that I didn't finish the Les Mis Chapter A Day Readalong. I will still finish Les Mis some day, I'm still just not sure when. I love it every time I pick it up again, I just don't pick it up all that often at the moment, and certainly not every day. I need to try to get back to that habit again, and get it finished. Then I'm tempted to listen to the audiobook...

Also, many of the books I read were audiobooks. I slipped easily into the arms of audiobooks as my actual reading dwindled. A lovely way to keep "reading". 

I also had a bad year of rating my reads, so this is year in review is made all the trickier. I like to wait until I do my review to rate, but then if I don't do the review, the rating doesn't happen and then it all falls away like grains of sand. So what were the books that I gave 5 stars to? Or those that I think I should have given 5 stars to if I had bothered to rate them at all?

The Pigeon. Patrick Suskind

Les Misérables. Victor Hugo

The Latecomer. Dimitri Verhulst

Claris: The Chicest Mouse in Paris. Megan Hess

Big Little Lies. Liane Moriarty. Audio

The (audio)book, the TV series, the soundtrack. I love it all. 

Migration. Mike Unwin. Jenni Desmond

Poo: A Natural History of the Unmentionable. Nicola Davies. Neal Layton (illustrator)

The Art of Frugal Hedonism. Annie Raser-Rowland. Adam Grubb

Life After Life. Kate Atkinson. Audio

5 stars for the audiobook performance. 4-4.5 stars for the book. 

The Art of Living Alone and Loving It. Jane Mathews

Any Ordinary Day. Leigh Sales. Audio (the tea slurping edition)

Born a Crime. Trevor Noah. Audio

Do I have a book of the year? I'm not so sure. I really liked all these books, but I'm not sure that any particular one shines more than the others. 

11 (12 including Les Mis) of my 54 reads were, or should have been, 5 stars! Not bad for a bad reading year. 

5 Aussie books

9 Adult reads

3 Picture books

0 Verse Novels

4 Audio Books

5 Nonfiction Books

8 Female Authors/Illustrators

7 Male Authors

11 New to Me Authors

I appear to have let another year slip by without reading any Jackie French. How can this be? What an egregious oversight. It must not happen again this year. 

The Dry

Oh I'm so glad that I finally got around to The Dry, and so glad that it lives up to the hype. That is of course the major risk of leaving a phenomenally successful book a few years, yes the buzz has died down, but then there's years of accumulated expectations, not many books can survive that- but The Dry certainly did.

I was hooked from the very start, the prologue is haunting, and daily reality for many Australian farmers. 

It wasn't as though the farm hadn't seen death before, and the blowflies didn't discriminate. To them there was little difference between a carcass and a corpse.

Bam!

The drought had left the flies spoiled for choice that summer. They sought out unblinking eyes and sticky wounds as the farmers of Kiewarra levelled their rifles at skinny livestock. No rain meant no feed. And no feed made for difficult decisions, as the tiny town shimmered under day after day of burning blue sky. 

Thirty six year old Aaron Falk returns to his hometown in country Victoria for the funeral of his childhood best friend, Luke Hadler. Luke it seems has killed his wife and young son, and then turned the gun on himself. A type of murder-suicide that is all too common. But a few things don't add up from the start. How did the infant daughter survive for one?

Aaron  is a financial detective with the Australian Federal Police, who has lived in Melbourne since he and his father suddenly left Kiewarra under a cloud twenty years ago. He hates returning due to the echoes from twenty years ago, and can't wait to leave town again, he is counting down the hours til he can quietly leave. 

Jane Harper writes a great story, and one that kept me guessing (wrongly to a large extent, although I did get some minor things right) until the end. Although I was quite confused by some of the twenty year old scenario, and had to dip into sections of the print copy that I have after I finished the audiobook to straighten it out in my head. But she really used emotion very well. We get perspective from many characters, with many different points of view. It's not just a police procedural kind of thriller, there's a great emotional depth to the characters. She was a finance journalist for over a decade and it shows in her understanding of the different characters. And there's lots of great characters here. The town, the pub, the town bullies, the town drunks, the small minds, they all feel real. 

'No-one tells you this is how it's going to be, do they? Oh yes, they're all so sorry for your loss, all so keen to pop round and get the gossip when it happens, but no-one mentions having to go through your dead son's drawers and return their library books, do they? No-one tells you how to cope with that.'

I enjoyed the story from the start, but from about half way through I was totally hooked, and I listened to second half of the book on a single day, "reading" well past my bed time, and into the wee small hours- at which time I fell asleep with 15 minutes to go. Just. Couldn't. Stay. Awake... Luckily I could finish it off the next morning. 

Steve Shanahan does a really great job of narrating the audio book, his laconic Australian drawl was a perfect choice, but I really wish that audiobook editors (that must be a job, yes?) would put a tiny extra pause to give the listener a clue as to when the narrative changes back and forth in time. Readers of The Dry get a change from roman to italic fonts, listeners to the otherwise excellent audiobook don't get any kind of indication that we're jumping back and forth by 20 years. 

The Dry has won many, many awards starting from before it was even published when it won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript in 2015. 

Jane Harper has now published three books and you can be sure that the next two have pushed their way up towards the top of my TBR. I've already downloaded her second (audio)book, Force of Nature, another Aaron Falk story, but I believe not directly related to The Dry. 

A movie version of The Dry is in production, and will start filming next month in Victoria. Which is great timing on my part, by the time the movie comes out I should have forgotten enough details to make it even more enjoyable. Eric Bana has been cast to play Aaron Falk. It should be great. I can't wait. 

Jane Harper did a TEDTalk about creativity late last year.

http://australianwomenwriters.com

Les Misérables A Few Pages of History/ Quelques Pages d'histoire V4B1

Well this is a tough book to get through when you're trying to sprint to the end of the volume. A  Few Pages of History, yes. More like Five Chapters of History. Dense, intellectual history that I wish I knew enough to truly appreciate and understand. 

In (very fast) French

but with subtitles

The first five chapters of this book are a history lesson about the two years following the July Revolution of 1830. Much quieter than the well known French Revolution of 1789, the July revolution saw Louis-Philippe installed as King of the French. It seems Victor Hugo was quite the Louis-Philippe fan, even though he said that "the hour has not yet struck when history speaks in its venerable and impartial voice" to pass the "final verdict on this king". Yet he is "one of the best princes who ever sat  on a throne". "He was born a prince and believed that he had been elected king."

Louis-Philippe was a king of total transparency. While he reigned there was press freedom, parliamentary freedom, freedom of conscience and freedom of speech.

Louis-Philippe sounds a rather fascinating man. 

He was a bit of a builder, a bit of a gardener, a bit of a doctor. He bled a postilion who fell off his horse. Louis-Philippe went nowhere without his surgical knife, any more  than Henri III without his dagger. The royalists jeered at this ridiculous king, the first ever to shed blood as a cure. 

We now know of course that the last thing a horse rider needs after a fall, and presumably decent trauma is further blood loss, and we would do the exact opposite and transfuse them if required, but the 19th century was interesting times. 

There is just so much detail and knowledge jam packed into every sentence of this book. I have a particular fascination with Joan of Arc, and so I was most interested to read:

One of Louis-Philippe's daughters, Marie d'Orléans, won for her distinguished family's name a place among artists, as Charles d'Orléans had won for it a place among poets. She carved a statue of her soul and named it 'Joan of Arc'.

Fascinating! This statue still exists and is on display at Versailles. I've visited Versailles many times. I don't remember seeing this statue in particular, but will have to trawl through my photos sometime, as I always take a picture of any Joan statue that I see. I'd thought that I'd visited Versailles enough but perhaps I will need to return. It seems the original is marble and there are several bronze replicas about the place (New York, Orleans and Domrémy at least), and there is even a painting by Auguste Vinchon of Louis-Philippe visiting the statue that I now need to see. 

The royal family in front of the statue of Joan of Arc
Auguste Vinchon, 1848

Aaaah, If only I could get to Versailles before February 3 I could see the current exhibition Louis-Philippe and Versailles! Louis-Philippe turned Versailles into a museum, and now 32 rooms not normally open to the public will be open for this exhibition. (There is a magnificent 76 page Press Kit to download from that page for those of us stuck in the Southern Hemisphere, or otherwise not near Versailles)

This book is really quite philosophical as well. 

Some people have wanted wrongly to identify the bourgeoisie as a class. The bourgeoisie is simply the contented section of the people. The bourgeois is the man who now has time to sit down. A chair is not a caste. 

And I think gives us an insight into Victor Hugo's own vision of the future. 

Solve the two problems, encourage the rich and protect the poor, eliminate destitution, put an end to the unjust exploitation of the weak by the strong; curb the iniquitous envy, in the one who is making his way up, of the one who has arrived; set the wages for a job fairly and in the spirit of fellowship, foster the development of childhood with free compulsory education and make knowledge the foundation of manliness, develop minds while keeping hands busy; democratise property not by abolishing it but by making it universal, so that every citizen without exception may be a property owner, something easier to achieve than people think. In short, lean how to produce wealth and how to distribute it, and you will have both material greatness and moral greatness. And you will be worthy of calling yourself France. 

In chapter 6 Enjolras and His Lieutenants we once again get back to the narrative. Enjolras is assessing the strength of numbers.

How many are we?... Revolutionaries should always feel a sense of urgency, progress has no time to lose.

All quotes are from the 2013 Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, translated by Christine Donougher. 

Les Misérables V3 Marius

Oh dear. I've had such a bad reading (and blogging) year. I've been becalmed for months, and not just in Les Mis. I was so excited about the #LesMisReadalong at the start of the year. I really thought I could keep up with it. It seemed doable. Manageable. Even though I am notoriously bad at books over 500 pages I thought that tackling a chapter a day might help me get over the line on time. Well, nope.

I was stalled in May for a long time, and then managed to get caught up to August. Although sadly in the Real Life World it's December, and not August. It's not like I don't like Victor Hugo's writing- I really do. There is something quotable or profound on pretty much every page. I do still very much want to finish it, I don't want to DNF Les Mis. I'm always more optimistic about my reading capabilities than I will ever achieve in this life time (which goes much of the way to explaining my TBR) , so much so that it was only yesterday that I realised that I really wouldn't finish Les Mis in the allocated 2018 reading time. 

But last night I finished Volume 3, Marius, and now I'm going to make a last ditch effort and try to read V4 The Rue Plumet Idyll and The Rue St-Denis Epic before the end of the year. This is optimistic I know. Especially as I go back to work on Sunday, and have multiple social engagements to fit in too. 

Marius is of course very much the subject of his own volume. Despite qualifying as a lawyer Marius falls onto very hard times after his estrangement from his grandfather. 

Life became hard for Marius. Using his clothes and his watch for food was nothing. There was much worse he had to stomach. Terrible hardship, consisting of days without bread, nights without sleep, no candle in the evening, no fire in the hearth, weeks without work, a future without hope, a coat worn through at the elbows, an old hat that makes young girls laugh, a door found locked a night because the rent was not paid, the insolence of the doorman and the eating-house keeper, the sneering of neighbours, humiliations, dignity trampled underfoot, having to accept any kind of work, demoralisation, bitterness, despondency. 

We learn that "Marius was now a handsome young man of medium height, with thick jet-black hair, an intelligent high forehead, flared, sensuous nostrils, an air of sincerity and calm", and when he first sees a young girl sitting with an old man in the Luxembourg Gardens, she is "a slip of a thing of thirteen or fourteen years of age, so thin as to be almost ugly, awkward, unremarkable, but with some promise perhaps of having quite attractive eyes."

Having all my prior Les Mis knowledge based on the stage and movie versions I was quite surprised at this first description of teenage Cosette (not that Marius knows her name yet, and doesn't throughout this whole volume). Still, six months passes without Marius seeing the girl on the bench, and she has become quite changed when next he sees her. 

Only, when he came close, it was certainly the same man but it seemed too him it was no longer the same girl. The person he now saw was a tall and beautiful creature with all the loveliest of womanly curves at that very moment when they are still combined with all the most artless of childish graces. A fleeting and innocent moment that can only be conveyed by these three words: fifteen years old. 

Which almost sounds a bit creepy to the modern reader. Although Marius is a young man and he soon falls in love with Cosette merely by sight. I was delighted that there was some hanky dropping as in The Three Musketeers. 

Most of the rest of the volume is Marius trying to find Cosette again after having become too obvious and drawing her father's attention, and the rather dramatic events in the Gorbeau tenement when  Jondrette lures his benefactor into an ambush. There is much beauty in Hugo's prose about poverty and the misery of the 19th century French human condition. 

Cities, like forests, have their dens, and inside them lurks whatever they have that is most savage and fearsome. Only, in cities, what lurks there is ferocious, foul and small, that is to say, ugly. In forests, what lurks there is ferocious, wild and big, that is to say, beautiful. Den for den, that of the beasts, is preferable to that of man. Caves are better than slums. 

The contrast between rich and poor. 

"Villain! Yes, I know that's what you call us, you rich folk! Well, it's true my business went bust, I'm in hiding, I've no food, I've no money, I'm a villain! I've not eaten for three days, I'm a villain! Ah! you lot keep your feet warm, you have shoes made by Sakoski, you have padded overcoats like archbishophs, you live on the first floor in houses with caretaker, you eat truffles, you eat asparagus at forty francs a bunch in the month of January, and green peas, you gorge yourselves, and when you want to know whether it's cold you look in the newspaper to see what Engineer Chevallier's thermometer says. We're our won thermometers, we are! We don't need to go down to the embankment and look on the corner of the Tour de l'Horloge to find out how many degrees below zero it is. We feel the blood freezing in our veins and the ice reaching into our hearts, and we say: "There is no God!" And you come into our dens, yes, our dens, and call us villains!"

I was surprised at one of the villains of the Patron-Minette gang was called Montparnasse, and wondered if the famous left bank region was named after a fictitious criminal, or indeed a real criminal. Although I can't find anything out there to suggest that this is the case. Wikipedia suggests that Montparnasse has been part of Paris since the 17th century, obviously long predating Victor Hugo. 

Also fascinating to see a direct reference to the les misérables of our title:

They seemed very depraved, very corrupt, very debased- heinous, even - but rare are those who fall without sinking into vice. In any case, there is a point where the poor and the wicked become mixed up and lumped together in the one fateful word: les misérables- the wretched.

And now onward and upward to Volume 4...

All quotes are from the 2013 Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, translated by Christine Donougher. 

The Teacher's Pet

I finally caught up with The Teacher's Pet recently, having heard about it a lot this year, probably first on Chat 10 Looks 3. The Teacher's Pet is a podcast by Australian journalist Hedley Thomas. It has since been downloaded 29 million times, it won the Gold Walkley Award, Australia's highest journalism award. The podcast started in May this year, and focuses on the 1982 disappearance, and likely murder, of Lyn Dawson, a nurse, wife and mother, from the Northern Beaches of Sydney.

I think most Australians would have some memories of this case over time. I can't remember when I first heard about it, but I certainly did not know then all that I do now. It's just incredible that Lyn Dawson's disappearance was never investigated at the time. Incredible that 36 years have passed since she disappeared. Incredible that two coroners have recommended that her husband be tried for murder, but nothing ever happened.

Lyn Dawson disappeared, never to be heard from or seen again in January 1982. Her marriage had been under severe strain for months and years. Her husband had moved his teenage lover into their home under the guise of her being the babysitter for the couple's two young girls. Lyn was obviously aware of their relationship. She was aware that the babysitter was a high school student at the school where her husband taught PE at the time their relationship started.  She must have felt so much betrayal, hurt and anguish.

It's hard to talk about, or even think about, The Teacher's Pet as entertainment. It's obviously investigative at its focus, rather than pure entertainment. But I'm glad I listened to it. I'm really glad that I managed to time it so that I was most of the way through the podcast, about 10 or 11 episodes in, when Chris Dawson was finally arrested and charged with murder. It gave my listening a real push, just as it was all getting a bit too samey, and I hustled through to the end. The huge success of the podcast, and the timing of the arrest, can be no coincidence. I know the police  have been looking at the case again over the past few years, but an arrest after 36 years at the same time as the most intense public interest and pressure in the case?

There are issues with the sound quality in some episodes, and it does go over the same ground over and over again. The episodes become longer and longer as it goes along. For me it could have done with a bigger pruning. Like every one else who has listened to the podcast I will be very interested in the trial when it happens. I certainly hope that Lyn can be found now and laid to rest.

60 Minutes did a story this year on Lyn Dawson.

Australian Story The Teacher's Wife

Hedley Thomas talks about making the The Teacher's Pet on The Betoota Advocate.

International Dublin Literary Award 2019 Longlist

I haven't been keeping up with booklists and award lists this year (there's a few things I haven't been keeping up with this year it seems), but then Lisa at ANZLitlovers alerted me to the 2019 International Dublin Literary Award Longlist. And I noticed that even I have read a few. Of course many more are on my TBR. I'm putting this Listmania list out there to help push shame me into picking up those books.

The New Animals by Pip Adam
Stay With Me by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀
4321 by Paul Auster

Beartown / The Scandal by Fredrik Backman, translated from the Swedish by Neil Smith
Mrs Osmond by John Banville
The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao by Martha Batalha, translated from the Portuguese by Eric M. B. Becker
A Line Made by Walking by Sara Baume
The Trick by Emanuel Bergmann
The 7th Function of Language by Laurent Binet, translated from the French by Sam Taylor
The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne

The Greatest Hits of Wanda Jaynes by Bridget Canning
A Long Way From Home by Peter Carey
Marlborough Man by Alan Carter
Song of the Sun God by Shankari Chandran
Dragon Springs Road by Janie Chang
Brother by David Chariandy
What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons
Terra Nullius by Claire G. Coleman
The Last Beothuk by Gary Collins
Acts of Allegiance by Peter Cunningham

The Life to Come by Michelle de Kretser
In the Distance by Hernan Diaz
Her by Garry Disher
Smile by Roddy Doyle
A Vineyard in Andalusia /The Vineyard by Maria Dueñas, translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor & Lorenza García

Special Envoy by Jean Echenoz, translated from the French by Sam Taylor
Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan
American War by Omar El Akkad
Compass by Mathias Énard, translated from the French by Charlotte Mandell
Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky

Decline and Fall on Savage Street byFiona Farrell
First Person by Richard Flanagan
This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel
The Invented Part by Rodrigo Fresán, translated from the Spanish by Will Vanderhyden
History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund

Return to the Dark Valley by Santiago Gamboa, translated from the Spanish by Howard Curtis

Here in Berlin by Cristina Garcia
Dreams Beyond the Shore by Tamika Gibson
There Your Heart Lies by Mary Gordon
Little Sister by Barbara Gowdy
The Road to Shenzhen by Huang Guosheng

How to Stop Time by Matt Haig

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
A House in Norway by Vigdis Hjorth, translated from the Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund
The Sparsholt Affair by Alan Hollinghurst
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by  Gail Honeyman (see my review)

Sleeps Standing Moetu by Witi Ithimaera, translated from Maori by Hemi Kelly
Darker by E.L. James
The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin
Baby by Annaleese Jochems
First Snow, Last Light by Wayne Johnston
The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce

Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfař
English Animals by Laura Kaye
You Should Have Left by Daniel Kehlmann, translated from the German by Ross Benjamin
Of Darkness by Josefine Klougart, translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken
The Leavers by Lisa Ko
The Harvest of Chronos by Mojca Kumerdej, translated from the Slovenian by Rawley Grau

Ferocity by Nicola Lagioia, translated from the Italian by Antony Shugaar
The Choke by Sofie Laguna
A Poison Apple by Michel Laub, translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn
The Changeling by Victor LaValle
Pachinko by Jin Min Lee
The Barrowfields by Phillip Lewis
Escape From Sunset Grove by Minna Lindgren, translated from the Finnish by Kristian London
The End of Eddy by Edouard Louis, translated from the French by Michael Lucey
The History of Bees by Maja Lunde, translated from the Norwegian by Diane Oatley

Midwinter Break by Bernard MacLaverty (see my review)
The Temptation to be Happy by Lorenzo Marone, translated from the Italian by Shaun Whiteside
All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai
The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott
Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor
The Blood Miracles by Lisa McInerney
Ithaca by Alan McMonagle
Gather the Daughters by Jennie Melamed
The Forensic Records Society by Magnus Mills
Elmet by Fiona Mozley
Like a Fading Shadow by Antonio Muñoz Molina, translated from the Spanish by Camilo A. Ramirez
The Sixteen Trees of the Somme by Lars Mytting, translated from the Norwegian by Paul Russell Garrett

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
Mirror, Shoulder, Signal by Dorthe Nors, translated from the Danish by Misha Hoekstra

A Book of American Martyrs by Joyce Carol Oates
The Dead House by Billy O’Callaghan
Mama’s Maze by Agnes Ong
Incredible Floridas by Stephen Orr

Heretics by Leonardo Padura, translated from the Spanish by Anna Kushner
Uncertain Weights and Measures by Jocelyn Parr
Next Year, For Sure by Zoey Leigh Peterson
Reincarnation Blues by Michael Poore
No One is Coming to Save Us by Stephanie Powell Watts
The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley

The Death of the Perfect Sentence by Rein Raud, translated from the Estonian by Matthew Hyde
Through the Lonesome Dark by Paddy Richardson
White Bodies by Jane Robins
Son of a Trickster by Eden Robinson
Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney
To Die in Spring by Ralf Rothmann, translated from the German by Shaun Whiteside
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy
Breathe by Beni Rusani
The Golden House by Salman Rushdie
Idaho by Emily Ruskovich
The Bridge Troll Murders by Sheldon Russell

No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
Adua by Igiaba Scego, translated from the Italian by Jamie Richards
Tench by Inge Schilperoord, translated from the Dutch by David Colmer (currently stalled halfway, it's really short, maybe I should pick it up again)
See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt
Fever Dream by Samantha Schweblin, translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell
Taboo by Kim Scott
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See
A Boy in Winter by Rachel Seiffert
Kruso by Lutz Seiler, translated from the German by Tess Lewis
Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie
The Woman in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck
House of Spies by Daniel Silva
To the Back of Beyond by Peter Stamm, translated from the German by Michael Hofmann
My Cat Yugoslavia by Pajtim Statovci, translated from the Finnish by David Hackston
The Necessary Angel by C.K. Stead
The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.  by Neal Stephenson & Nicole Galland
Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout

My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent
Monte Carlo by Peter Terrin, translated from the Dutch by David Doherty
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (see my review)
Naondel ; the Red Abbey Chronicles by Maria Turtschaninoff, translated from the Swedish by A. A. Prime

Temporary People by Deepak Unnikrishnan
They Know Not What They Do by Jussi Valtonen, translated from the Finnish by Kristian London
Borne by Jeff VanderMeer
And Fire Came Down by Emma Viskic
Radiant Terminus by Antoine Volodine, translated from the French by Jeffrey Zuckerman

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
Clear to the Horizon by Dave Warner
Girlcott by Florenz Webb Maxwell
The Consequences by Niña Weijers, translated from the Dutch by Hester Velmans
When the English Fall by David Williams
Tin Man by Sarah Winman
Lost in September by Kathleen Winter

The Resurrection of Joan Ashby by Cherise Wolas
The Impossible Fairytale by Han Yujoo, translated from the Korean by Janet Hong
The Book of Joan by  Lidia Yuknavitch
The Image Interpreter by Zoran Živković, translated from the Serbian by Randall A. Major

7/141