The website of Author and Writer Eve Makis
Here you can find a selection of books that Eve has enjoyed, found inspiring or intends to read.
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974." And so begins Middlesex, the mesmerizing saga of a near-mythic Greek American family and the "roller-coaster ride of a single gene through time." The odd but utterly believable story of Cal Stephanides, and how this 41-year-old hermaphrodite was raised as Calliope, is at the tender heart of this long-awaited second novel from Jeffrey Eugenides, whose elegant and haunting 1993 debut, The Virgin Suicides, remains one of the finest first novels of recent memory."
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
Set in the post-colonial India of the 1950s, this sprawling saga involves four families--the Mehras, the Kapoors, the Chatterjis and the Khans--whose domestic crises illuminate the historical and social events of the era. Like an old-fashioned soap opera (or a Bombay talkie), the multi-charactered plot pits mothers against daughters, fathers against sons, Hindus against Muslims and small farmers against greedy landowners facing government-ordered dispossession. The story revolves around independent-minded Lata Mehra: Will she defy the stern order of her widowed upper-caste Hindu mother by marrying the Muslim youth she loves? The search for Lata's husband expands into a richly detailed and exotically vivid narrative that crisscrosses the fabric of India.
Brick Lane by Monica Ali
" Monica Ali's debut novel chronicles the life of Nazneen, a Bangladeshi girl so sickly at birth that the midwife at first declares her stillborn. At 18 her parents arrange a marriage to Chanu, a Bengali immigrant living in England. Although Chanu--who's twice Nazneen's age--turns out to be a foolish blowhard who "had a face like a frog," Nazneen accepts her fate, which seems to be the main life lesson taught by the women in her family. "If God wanted us to ask questions," her mother tells her, "he would have made us men." Over the next decade-and-a-half Nazneen grows into a strong, confident woman who doesn't defy fate so much as bend it to her will. The great delight to be had in Brick Lane lies with Ali's characters, from Chanu the kindly fool to Mrs. Islam the elderly loan shark to Karim the political rabblerouser, all living in a hothouse of Bengali immigrants. "
Small Island by Andrea Levy
"Andrea Levy's award-winning novel, Small Island, deftly brings two bleak families into crisp focus. First a Jamaican family, including the well-intentioned Gilbert, who can never manage to say or do exactly the right thing; Romeo Michael, who leaves a wake of women in his path; and finally, Hortense, whose primness belies her huge ambition to become English in every way possible. The other unhappy family is English, starting with Queenie, who escapes the drudgery of being a butcher's daughter only to marry a dull banker. As the chapters reverse chronology and the two groups collide and finally mesh, the book unfolds through time like a photo album, and Levy captures the struggle between class, race, and sex with a humor and tenderness that is both authentic and bracing. "
Little Infamies by Panos Karnezi
"Set in a backwater Greek village where a broken engagement can end in murder, the stories in Karnezis's debut collection are richly ironic antimorality tales. The characters are miscreants and dreamers: a priest so desperate to win the faith of his congregation that he stages a religious hoax; a doctor with hidden aspirations and a barkeep who knows all of the town's secrets. What's best about Karnezis's stories is not their sly plot twists or colourful portraits of village life (though these are good) but the deadpan conversations and monologues, alive with the author's subversive wit. The village doctor politely inquires about the teenager's stepfather. She politely answers, "He's still suffering from constipation. He says the medicines you've given him do him no good, and one of these days he's going to kill you."
Echoes from the Dead Zone - Across the Cyprus Divide by Yiannis Papadakis
"In the space of a generation, Cyprus - the island of Aphrodite, goddess of beauty and love - has experienced an anti-colonial struggle, post-colonial chaos, internecine fighting and hatred, civil war, invasion, population displacements and physical partition. The narrative of Cyprus' recent history has created numerous attitudes and prejudices which run deep but which have never before been explored on a human level. Now for the first time Yiannis Papadakis, firmly planted in the Greek Cypriot world, sets out to discover 'The Other' - the much maligned Turks. Papadakis decided with some trepidation to travel to Constantinople (to his Greek worldview it was still Constantinople) to learn Turkish. There he discovered that actually it is Istanbul, and that Turkey is not the place of his once imagined demonology. Armed with new insights he returned to Cyprus and delved into the two communities, locked in their mutually contemptuous embrace, to explore their common humanity and to understand what has divided them. He focused on Nicosia where the people who used to live together in one neighbourhood found themselves separated by a 'Dead Zone', two armies and a UN force. His was a journey to the various sides of the Dead Zone and to the various zones of the dead, the realms of memory and history. This book is the moving, sometimes humorous and always fascinating account of that journey."
Synopsis by Amazon.com
Two for teenagers:
Making Sense by Nadia Marks
"...interesting portrayal of the culture shock experienced by a teenager thrust into a world very different from her own."
Bitter Sweet by Nadia Marks
Julia, who readers first met and fell in love with in Nadia Marks debut novel "Making Sense", is back in the sequel "Bitter Sweet". A year older, a year wiser and practically fluent in everything English, from the language to the boys. But she also begins to feel caught between two worlds her independent, exciting new life and friends in London, and the comfort of her old life in her native Cyprus. Can a trip back to Cyprus sort all this out, or will she forever feel pulled in two directions? With her trademark humour and her light touch, Nadia Marks explores a variety of themes for today's teenagers. She looks at relationships between boys and girls, the taboo of multiple dating and how people from different cultures live together in Britain while maintaining their own identity."
