FEAST OR FAMINE

The Grammarians (2019) is set in America, in 1980s Manhattan.  Identical red-headed twin girls, Daphne and Laurel Wolfe, both love language and words, and each other. As children, they speak their own “twin language.” They “collect” words–and even call their dog Webster after the Webster Dictionary.   But as they grow older, their interest in men tests their twinship. Laurel and Larry: Daphne and Michael. On their double-wedding day, everyone is blissfully happy. But things change: “And then Laurel made herself a little bit more different. Laurel got her nose  fixed .” First appearances, then grammar! Their devotion to language moves in opposite directions: “There was something wayward in the twins’ relationship now, a devious shift” that their mother Sally sensed. Daphne is now a grammar columnist, writing the  People’s Pedant , determined to preserve the strict rules of grammar in the English language. Laurel is now a poet, determined to...

MARTINA NICOLLS  is an international aid and development consultant, and the  author   of: Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

Year of the Monkey (2019) is another memoir by American musician and author Patti Smith, following her most memorable 2010 autobiography  Just Kids . Just Kids  focused predominantly on her early years in the 1970s and her relationship with artist and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.  Year of the Monkey  is very different. This memoir focuses on dreams as she walks the coastline of Santa Cruz In California alone in preparation for a year of wandering. “Our dreams are a second life,” she says. It is 2016, the Year of the Monkey, and Patti Smith will be seventy years old. “Anything is possible … After all, it’s the Year of the Monkey.” She dreams of Uluru—Ayers Rock—in the middle of Australia: “It’s the dream capital of the world.” She dreams of people and places. She dreams of Zurich and the grave of James Joyce—and unicorns. Aiding her dreams are old photographs, reliving past memories.  In this transformative year, Smith blends dreams wi...

MARTINA NICOLLS  is an international aid and development consultant, and the  author   of: Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

MARTINA NICOLLS  is an international aid and development consultant, and the  author  of: Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

MARTINA NICOLLS  is an international aid and development consultant, and the  author   of: Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

MARTINA NICOLLS  is an international aid and development consultant, and the  author   of: Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).