she grew tired of corporate gamesmanship and pursued her master’s in fiction writing at the University of Southern California. Her first novel, a legal thriller entitled The Sausage Maker’s Daughters, was published under the name A.G.S. Johnson. Her second, The Human Trial, is the first book in a medical-thriller trilogy inspired by Gale’s own experiences with the gap between traditional medicine and approaches based on the findings of the great physicists of the 20th Century, like Einstein and Bohr.
At CrimeReads Gale tagged "five novels centered around war, mostly the Second World War, that focus on the crimes of the millions, both victims and perpetrators/accessories, into the small personal stories of individuals caught in the rip currents." One title on the list:
The English Patient, Michael OndaatjeRead about the other entries on the list.
It might be obvious that I love large, sweeping epics that carry one through time and lots of geographical space. All great books to me are a vacation. This novel’s view of invading and retaking Italy during WWII is gloriously portrayed in the unexpected romance between a nurse and a bomb-defusing specialist. While the nurse cares for a terminal (English) patient, the couple attempts to eek out life amid the chaos, danger, and ruins, knowing any moment could be the last. Thus, each moment they have becomes precious to the reader as well, in their terror and utter beauty.
The English Patient also made Emily Mitchell's list of five top historical novels to remind you how strange the past really was, Cathy Rentzenbrink's list of the top ten bookworms in fiction, Eli Goldstone's ten top list of secrets in fiction, Sarah Moss's top ten list of hospital novels, Robert Allison's top ten list of novels of desert war, Joel Cunningham's list of sixteen book-to-movie adaptations that won Academy Awards, Pico Iyer's top five list of books on crossing cultures, John Mullan's list of ten of the best deserts in literature and Jane Ciabattari's list of five masterpiece stories that worked as films.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
