Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
BOOK OF THE WEEK with Charlie Richards. Where My Heart Used to Beat, Sebastian Faulks, ISBN 978-0099549247 (Vintage) BD5 for Gulf Weekly Book Club members
On a small island off the south coast of France, Robert Hendricks – an English doctor who has seen the best and the worst the 20th Century had to offer – is forced to confront the events that made up his life. His host is Alexander Pereira, a man who seems to know more about his guest than Hendricks himself does.
The search for the past takes us through the war in Italy in 1944, a passionate love that seems to hold out hope, the great days of idealistic work in the 1960s and finally – unforgettably – back into the trenches of the Western Front.
This moving novel casts a long, baleful light over the century we have left behind but may never fully understand. Daring, ambitious and in the end profoundly moving, this is Faulks’s most remarkable book yet.
READ IT NOW IN PAPERBACK
Song of the Skylark, Erica James, ISBN 978-1409159575 (Orion) BD4.500 for Gulf Weekly Book Club members
Lizzie has an unfortunate knack for attracting bad luck, but this time she’s hit the jackpot. Losing her heart to her boss at the radio station where she works leads directly to losing her job, and with no money in the bank she’s forced to swallow her pride and return home to her parents. As if that wasn’t bad enough, her mother finds her work at the local care home for the elderly, and it’s there that Lizzie meets Mrs Dallimore.
In her nineties, Mrs Dallimore also finds herself in a situation which she’s reluctantly coming to terms with. Old age has finally caught up with her, and with her life drawing to a close she gives in to the temptation to relive the past by sharing it with Lizzie.
MY FAVOURITE READ OF THE WEEK
The Singles Game, Lauren Weisberger, ISBN 978-0007569246 (Harper) BD4.500 for Gulf Weekly Book Club members
Sweeping from Wimbledon to the Caribbean, from LA to mega yachts in the Med, The Singles Game is a brilliantly entertaining romp through a world where the stakes are high – and no-one plays by the rules.
When Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Silver makes a pact with the devil, infamously brutal tennis coach Todd Feltner, she finds herself catapulted into a world of stylists, private parties and secret dates with Hollywood royalty.
Under Todd it’s no more good-girl attitude: he wants warrior princess Charlie all the way, after all, no-one ever won by being nice.
Celebrity mags and gossip blogs go wild for Charlie, chasing scandal as she jets around the globe. But as the warrior princess’s star rises, both on and off the court, it comes at a high price. Is the real Charlie Silver still inside?
