This epic 800+ page novel deals with the dual plights of twin brothers - one with schizophrenia and one without. Domenick has spent the majority of his life protecting and simultaneously hating his brother Thomas because of his disease, to the point where his own life is nearly destroyed. The narrative is told through flashbacks and also features segments of the twins' grandfather's memoirs (and though he died before their birth he, predictably enough, has foreshadowed a lot of the novel's present). The themes of love, loss, familial obligation and personal responsibility are boundless here. Throughout the book, you're not really sure which brother you pity more and though Lamb probably could have cut out about 100 pages or so, it was still a compelling read.
Elizabeth George's Inspector Lynley mystery series is probably one of my favourites in the style of English detective stories. It's the series that I keep returning to, when I slip into a reading rut and can't focus on reading something new, particularly to the first book in the series A Great Deliverance. While there are lots of decent mystery series circulating now, the first book in George's Lynley stories has a certain grim insistence about it that keeps drawing me back to it. And in her latest contribution to the series, George has written a story that in many aspects parallels her first--however, these parallels did not become immediately apparent until the climax of the story. One of the things that I like best about Elizabeth George's writing is that she realises that a lot of times, the supporting characters can have better story potential than the main title character. She uses this to her advantage in almost all of the Lynley seri...
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