Inheritance and Foal's Bread

‘Inheritance’, the long awaited final book in Christopher Paolini’s wonderful series, is now on the shelf at the Library. Yvonne Zipp reviewed ‘Inheritance’ for The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books), and this is part of what she had to say: “Paolini began writing the first book, “Eragon,” when he was 15, and his parents, who owned a press, published it. He traveled to schools and Renaissance fairs, hand-selling his opus, until Carl Hiassen picked up a copy for his son on a fly-fishing vacation and put in a good word at Knopf. The rest is publishing history. Eragon and his blue dragon, Saphira, were an endearing duo, but critics, including this one, noted the novel’s debt to everyone from J.R.R. Tolkien and Anne McCaffrey to George Lucas. (I caught a David Eddings reference or two in the new one.) But Paolini had readers at “dragon.” "

"This final volume offers sieges, duels, traps, secret tunnels, evil priests, more sieges, vision quests, sea monsters and man-eating snails. Aside from a sadly underused Orik, now king of the dwarves, most of our favorite characters get their moment of derring-do. Eragon’s cousin Roran, who relies on wits and sheer cussedness, has risen in the rebel ranks — despite his lack of noble birth. He’s the U.S. Grant of the Varden. The quixotic Angela, who’s never mentioned without her title “the herbalist,” demonstrates heretofore unsuspected fighting skills, like Yoda in “Attack of the Clones” Eragon’s ally and crush, the elf Arya, and the female leader of the rebels, Nasuada, remain as formidable as ever.”

We have also received ‘Foal’s Bread’, the new book from Australian author Gillian Mears.Set in hardscrabble farming country and around the country show high-jumping circuit that prevailed in rural New South Wales prior to the Second World War, ‘Foal’s Bread’ tells the story of two generations of the Nancarrow family and their fortunes as dictated by the vicissitudes of the land. It is a love story of impossible beauty and sadness, a chronicle of dreams 'turned inside out', and miracles that never last, framed against a world both tender and unspeakably hard.

‘Foal’s Bread’ was reviewed by Owen Richardson for The Sydney Morning Herald (http://m.smh.com.au/entertainment/books ) on 6th November, 2011. He wrote of it: “Gillian Mears was never merely promising: the short stories she published and the Vogel-award-winning ‘The Mint Lawn’, all written when she was still in her 20s, showed a talent already working at a high level. In all these books, there was the vitality of a young writer but it was managed by the intelligence and control of a fully mature artist. It's been 16 years since that last novel. Time and energy have been given over to the battle with illness recounted in her matchless personal essays published in ‘Heat’. With ‘Foal’s Bread’, it's good to see one of our best writers is back in the game…….The prose of ‘Foal’s Bread’ doesn't always have the compressed energy and taut rhythms of Mears' earlier work. Yet, like all her writing, it is full of crystal-sharp observations, things seen with rapt attention."

The Library will be closed from 12noon on Saturday 24th December, re-opening at 10am on Tuesday 3rd January. We wish you a very happy Christmas, and hope you have the opportunity to enjoy a great book over the holidays.