The Berlin Stories brings together two of what Isherwood wrote while inspired by the city of Berlin. His most famous character (who I did not know), Sally Bowles, comes from this time of his life when he lived in Berlin. He lived here prior to and leading up to World War II. The two stories in this book are The Last of Mr. Norris and Goodbye to Berlin.
I believe Armistead Maupin stated it perfectly when he was discussing Isherwood’s writing style and how he uses words sparingly and only says what he means to say and therefore the writing is something incredibly beautiful and impacting. I definitely remember this from A Single Man and it rung through in this novel, but perhaps not as much.
You have to love a book with its first chapter titled “Rainy Days and Mondays Always Get Me Down.” I’m not positive but I think most of the chapters were song lyrics and most of them made me smile. Bootlegger’s Daughter takes place in a fictional rural county of North Carolina which vaguely resembles the surrounding counties where I grew up (thank you I-95).
I first want to say it irks me that the title is grammatically incorrect on the US version (Hornet’s versus Hornets’). It is a nest of hornets not one hornet’s nest.
White Teeth was a much more interesting read than I thought it would be. It was originally selected as one of the book group books for our AmeriCorps book group, but that sort of fell to the wayside a few months ago and I’d already purchased it.