A journalist for thirty years, Nina Darnton wrote her first novel, An African Affair three years ago.Her new novel is The Perfect Mother.
Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Darnton's reply:
I often have two books going at the same time. But when I started reading Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, I knew that strategy wouldn’t work. I simply couldn’t put it down and, when life intervened and I was forced to, I returned to it in any spare moment I had. It is a rare combination of a page turner that is also brilliantly written andVisit Nina Darnton's website.conceived with believable characters about whom I came to care.
There are a few other books I’ve read recently that I have to mention: The Circle by Dave Eggers, which chilled me by its presentation of the dystopian society we may be headed for where privacy is no longer a cherished concept. I also loved Rainy Royal, by Dylan Landis, a book of short stories that hang together to produce a study, an examination, a presentation of a compelling character, cruel and kind, artistic and wounded.
Finally, I love everything by Robert Harris, most recently An Officer and a Spy a retelling of the Dreyfus case. It is one of my favorite forms of fiction – using real life events (in this case the railroading, trial, punishment and final exoneration of an innocent man) and subjecting them to a novelist’s powers of analysis and imagination. Sometimes one can reach a deeper truth, or at least a fuller understanding of historical facts by way of fiction. This is one such time.
My Book, The Movie: The Perfect Mother.
--Marshal Zeringue
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