Theme+-+Intimacy+&+Closeness

//Blindsight// by Maurice Gee. Blindsight is the story of a good though damaged man and his less than virtuous sister. As their childhood closeness unravels, Alice moves into her career in science (she's a mycologist), while Gordon descents into vagrancy and silence. For more than thirty years they do not meet. Then a young man appears at Alice's door, claiming a relationship she never knew she had. As he becomes part of her carefully guarded world, she cautiously begins to reveal the past. But is she telling him everything? Jealousy, ambition and love shape the fates of Alice and Gordon in this compelling story of loyalty and family ties. //Mahalia // by Joanne Horniman. Single teenage father Matt is 17 and looks after his baby, Mahalia. His girlfriend couldn't cope and has gone away, perhaps forever. This novel explores the tensions in Matt's existence between the purposeful growth and demands of the baby and his own sense of drift.  //The Bean Trees // by Barbara Kingsolver. //Deadly Unna // by Philip Gwynne, Dumby and Blacky don't have a lot in common. Dumby's the star of the football team, Blacky's a gutless wonder. Dumby's got the knack with girls. Blacky never knows what to say. Dumby's a Nunga. Blacky's white. But they're friends. And it could be **deadly.** Secondary reading level. //Middlesex // by Jeffery Eugenedes. This is the tale of a gene that passes down through three generations and flowers in the teenage body of Callie. Thanks to this gene, she begins to realise she is part girl, part boy. What results is a fable of the intricacies of gender and the untidy promptings of desire.  //Run // by Ann Patchett. //The Reader //<span style="font-family: 'Arial', 'sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-NZ;"> by Bernhard Schlink. <span style="font-family: 'Verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt;">For 15-year-old Michael Berg, a chance meeting with an older woman leads to far more than he ever imagined. The woman in question is Hanna, and before long they embark on a passionate, clandestine love affair which leaves Michael both euphoric and confused. For Hanna is not all she seems. Years later, as a law student observing a trial in Germany, Michael is shocked to realize that the person in the dock is Hanna. The woman he had loved is a criminal. Much about her behaviour during the trial does not make sense. But then suddenly, and terribly, it does - Hanna is not only obliged to answer for a horrible crime, she is also desperately concealing an even deeper secret. 'A tender, horrifying novel that shows blazingly well how the Holocaust should be dealt with in fiction. <span style="font-family: 'Arial', 'sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-NZ;"> //<span style="font-family: 'Arial', 'sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-NZ;">Looking for alaska //<span style="font-family: 'Arial', 'sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-NZ;"> by John Green. <span style="font-family: 'Verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt;">Sixteen-year-old Miles' first year at Culver Creek Preparatory School in Alabama includes good friends and great pranks, but is defined by the search for answers about life and death after a fatal car crash. Secondary. <span style="font-family: 'Arial', 'sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-NZ;"> //<span style="font-family: 'Arial', 'sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-NZ;">Love in a time of cholera //<span style="font-family: 'Arial', 'sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-NZ;"> by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. <span style="font-family: 'Verdana', 'sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 10pt;">Set on the Caribbean coast of South America, this love story brings together Fermina Daza, her distinguished husband, and Florentino Ariza who has secretly loved her for more than fifty years. When Fermina's husband dies Florentino's chance for happiness comes. <span style="font-family: 'Arial', 'sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-NZ;"> //<span style="font-family: 'Arial', 'sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-NZ;">Atonement //<span style="font-family: 'Arial', 'sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-NZ;"> by Ian McEwan. //<span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Arial', 'sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-NZ;">The Gurnsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society //<span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Arial', 'sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-NZ;"> by Mary Ann Schaffer <span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Arial', 'sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">
 * <span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Georgia', 'serif'; color: red; font-size: 12pt;">Theme of Intimacy and Closeness **