Reading All the Bookers!

  Booker Prize :  Shortlisted 2009 Plot Time and Place :  1940s, Warwickshire, England Opening sentence :    "I first saw Hundreds Hall when I was ten years old". Plot summary :  A country doctor, Dr. Faraday, makes friends with an old gentry family of declining fortunes, who own a very old estate that is crumbling around them. Perplexing events unfold, which may or may not be of supernatural origin, culminating in tragedy. Review :  This is a ghost story, a love story, a critique of the English class system, and a mystery, with a great atmosphere and a great final twist.  Rating :   5/5

  Booker Prize:  Shortlisted 2006 Plot Time and Place :  1940s London Opening sentence:   "So this, said Kay to herself, is the sort of person you've become: a person whose clocks and wrist-watches have stopped, and who tells the time, instead, by the particular kind of cripple arriving at her landlord's door." Plot summary:  This is a story about several relationships, that take place in London, in 1941 during the Blitz, in 1944, and then after the war is over in 1947. Only their stories are revealed backwards. So first we find out how it ended in 1947, and we end with how it all started in 1941. Review:  I like Sarah Waters because: she's very good at making the reader feel like we're really there, she's amazing at writing sensual lesbian scenes, she's very imaginative, she writes wonderful historical descriptions, right down to the tiniest detail of day-to-day life, and you just want to read everything she's ever written.  Rating:  4/5 (Not a 5...

  Booker Prize:  Booker 2002 shortlisted Plot Time and Place : Victorian-era Britain Opening sentence:   "My name, in those days, was Susan Trinder. People called me Sue." Plot summary:  Sue Trinder, an orphan raised in a "den of thieves" by her adoptive mother, Mrs. Sucksby, is sent to help Richard "Gentleman" Rivers seduce a wealthy heiress. Posing as a maid, Sue is to gain the trust of the lady, Maud Lilly, and eventually persuade her to elope with Gentleman. Review:  I went into this book not knowing anything about it, except that it was set in Victorian England. I had no idea it had a great plot twist, great characters, a lesbian angle, and a great way of making you feel like you're really there! Rating:  5/5