The Gentleman From Peru

By Jonathan Raban, Picador, trade paperback, $40

Jonathan Raban is one of my favourite writers. He is perhaps best known for his travel writing on sailing around the UK (Coasting) or times spent in various parts of the US (Passage to Juneau).

But he is also a novelist, and it is the combination of literary sensibility and keen observation that makes

Raban’s writing so sharply beautiful.

This memoir tells the multiple stories of Raban’s father and mother’s courtship and marriage separated by his father’s enlistment in WWII and that of Raban’s own stroke at 69.

It is perhaps an unlikely mix, however, as Raban tracks his father’s movement through the war zones of the early 40s and his mother’s life of bringing up a newborn in England, echoes of understanding are revealed by his own attempts to mentally and physically return to a life he took for granted.

There is a sense of sadness in the book as the writer feels his life irrevocably changed. And in the regret over the estrangement from his father. However, it is an exquisite read: touching and funny.

A rewarding final work.

– Adrian Hardingham

By André Aciman, Faber & Faber, hardcover, $30

The Gentleman From Peru is a beguiling novella written by the author of the bestselling novel, Call Me By Your Name, which was adapted into an award-winning film of the same name.

Andre Aciman transports the reader again to the sun-drenched playgrounds of the

Italian coastline. His

Amalfi Coast shimmers with anticipation of the events to take place, not unlike “Mongibello”

as depicted in Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley novels. Something is afoot, secrets and mystery abound and not all the players are what they seem.

Invited by their absent college pal to embark on a yachting holiday, a group of young Americans are marooned at a luxurious resort when their yacht needs emergency repairs. Lazy days are passed but are shadowed by the presence of an older gentleman whom the group reluctantly invite into their fold. What comes next is both a charming and dangerous journey of fortune, grief, passion and obsessive love. Beautifully packaged and artfully realized, this wonderful novella is the perfect antidote – to the on coming of winter, your reading lull or even an actual ill that has you laid up – or gift.

– Megan O’Brien