Corsica
Have Kindle, will travel!
Let’s hear it for the trusty Kindle … or indeed e-readers in general! Mine is decidedly worn and elderly but once again it carried a great store of holiday reading for my recent trip to Sardinia and Corsica.
Two books stood out …
Heart Collector by Jacques Vandroux (translated by Wendeline A Hardenberg) took me into the minds of two diabolically clever psychopaths who torture young women and surgically remove their hearts for their personal gratification. The macabre plotting, the coldly calculating minds, the race against time to save yet another young woman’s life, kept the pages turning to the last word. Chilling, gripping, disturbing.
This Must Be the Place by Maggie O’Farrell explores a marriage between bluff New Yorker, Daniel Sullivan, and his wife, Claudette, an eccentric and reclusive ex-film star living in the wilds of Donegal with a propensity to shoot at anyone daring to venture up their driveway. The lyrical prose, the criss-crossing of continents and time zones, the perceptive insights into both the psyche and illness, make this compelling reading.
Though totally different in almost every way, both carried me effortlessly through long journeys, and many hours waiting in airports and stations, and sitting on the hotel balcony between sightseeing and meals.
Much as I love the heft and allure of actual hard copies normally, the weightlessness and choice of sixty plus e-books is ideal for such times as this. The fact that the first of my chosen two is set in France, and the main character in the second book is half French, seemed to position them naturally for this time under deep blue skies and surrounded by turquoise waters and foreign tongues.
