Wulf's Book Reviews

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett My rating: 2 of 5 stars “ But nothing ever happens ” - “Lemon Tree” (Fool’s Garden) I’m going to spoil this rather thoroughly, so proceed with mild caution. Maeve and Danny are the children of Cyril and Elna Conroy. Cyril built a property empire from scratch, taking Danny along to collect rent in cash. Maeve, Danny’s older sister, is mostly sidelined and left in the care of “Fluffy”, the nanny, and the household staff, Sandy and Jocelyn. » “Money,” our father said, nodding. It wasn’t a complicated idea. « Elna is largely out of the picture after leaving, first periodically, soon permanently. While Danny is mostly unaffected due to not even remembering his mother, Maeve is desperate to see her again. A few years after Elna leaves, Cyril marries his second wife, Andrea, who becomes Maeve’s and Danny’s evil stepmother. When Cyril unexpectedly dies, Andrea basically evicts everyone but her own two children, Norma and Bright, from the eponymous “Dutch Hous...

Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple My rating: 3 of 5 stars I went into Maria Semple's " Where'd You Go, Bernadette " expecting a clever, slightly chaotic satire with a warm centre. That’s mostly what I got, but I also got a structure that kept tripping me up. Bernadette is, by design, difficult: brilliant, prickly, and permanently on the verge of bolting. Semple captures the specific kind of marital whiplash where the person you love becomes unrecognisable, and you’re left staring across the table, wondering when it happened. » There was a terrifying chasm between the woman I fell in love with and the ungovernable one sitting across from me. « Bee, thankfully, is the emotional anchor. She’s smart, steady, and quietly funny, and I cared about her far more than I cared about the Seattle “eccentrics” circling her mother like gnats. » One of the gnats at Galer Street claims I ran over her foot at pickup. I would laugh at the whole thing, but I’m too bored. ...

Sherlock Holmes and the Missing Shakespeare by J.R. Rain My rating: 1 of 5 stars I learned to read by secretly snatching my mother’s early 20th-century editions of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. Since then, the fascination with anything Holmes has never left me. Many have tried to spin further tales of Holmes and Watson; some did well, others failed miserably. This one, sadly, falls into the latter category. The story is rather convoluted, albeit light in detail. Watson is reduced to a mere admiring fan, trapped in a constant " reverie and renewed admiration for Mr. Holmes ", while Holmes himself is more of a generic action hero than a detective. In one particularly jarring scene, " Holmes delivered a punishing uppercut to the man’s jaw " so hard his feet left the ground, before the detective " delivered an unforgiving heel kick to his jaw to finish him off ". This isn't the Holmes of Baker Street; it's a Victorian John Wick. The writing is medio...