Bøker av Franciska Soares

Have you ever made a split-second decision that changed the course of your life? When, at one fell swoop, your world glided from one side of a thin veil that was happiness, to the other? Nineteen-year-old honey-eyed Perpetua (Pippa), a tragic, heartbreakingly beautiful Luso-Indian had to do just that and it takes her almost four decades to discover that she was not the decisionmaker after all - someone centuries ago made that decision for her. Can she reach across space and time and rent that veil? Is it too late? Can she ever be happy? Fulfilled? They Whisper in my Blood is a moving love story, a sweeping tale, a panorama of a Portuguese-Indian family's history told through a poignant refrain that is this clan's nemesis. It screams across time and continents. There's murder, girl-child trafficking, a torrid mixed-race affair and homophobia, all of which beget intrigue, sensuousness, heartache . . . but always hope. The characters - visceral, impassioned and deeply flawed - stay with you long after the last page is turned. Fans of authors like Arundhati Roy, Delia Owens and Richard Powers will love this multi-generational story. Nature's spontaneous beauty is reverenced in sentences that weave lush imagery; sentences that resound with stunning prose crafted seemingly by a poet. Sculpted with as bold a hand, is the plot which delivers one hell of a punch. Combining the literary pizzaz of A passage to India, the cultural nuances of characters found in novels like The God of Small Things and The Joy Luck Club , the poignancy of The Bridges of Madison County, the wondrously inspirational, life-affirming plot of A Long Way Home, They Whisper in My Blood captures the deep essence of the struggles endured by those of us who are mangled by tradition, prejudices and superstitions and snobbery. Foreword contributed by Amitabh Bachchan

Language, myths, stories, and even our understanding of reality are usually expressed in the form of oppositions. The sacred and the profane, absence and presence, male and female. Very fittingly opposition is the central theme that pervades this seemingly disparate collage of lyrical compositions. Franciska Soares who has progressively lost her hearing claims that it is only in her brand-new silent world that she has discovered her ability to hear. Using poetry with its quintessential sacramental nature, she gives the reader an opportunity to experience this rapture. There's no need for a poet's ear to discern the music, the nuances. And like an artist, she has kept her poems incomplete and open. Quiet enough is most definitely a work of art, and one for the desk, not the bookshelf.

Are we all subject to the violence and secrets of our mind, forever marked by them?Haunted by the memory of her parent's gory murders, Abigail Moore's life is shaped by a nebulous feeling of guilt. She is sent off to her loving grandmother who is fashioned from the same clay as she is. Gramme Kathleen lives in a small close-knit Roman Catholic community on Gloriosa Street, a street that crackles with the energy of its people; people who live secret lives camouflaged, rendered almost invisible in a country that teems with billions - India. On her grandmother's death Abigail is set adrift once more and decides to return to New Zealand, the country of her birth. There she is reunited with her step-brothers Robert and Kenneth. Though they are strangers to her, she cannot deny the tenuous link she shares with them - memories of that terrifying night.Memory, they say can be imperfect, and can throw up surprises, as Abigail soon discovers. Will the truth she uncovers rouse the murderer into striking again? Will she be his next victim?To readers who need a thrilling murder/mystery to tantalize the senses, and for those who are given to rooting for the underdog in hopes she'll someday blunder into the amazing person she's meant to be - this one's for you. This is a coming-to-wisdom story written by the author of They Whisper in my Blood. There's nuanced character growth and zippy prose. An across-the-board assault on the senses.