Book news, reviews and recommendations
Rupert Thomson’s one of those authors who delivers well turned out, interesting fiction with little brouhaha. His work ranges widely from the early days of Soft!, a satire on the advertising world, to Secrecy, set in the Medici court of seventeenth-century Florence. Dark is the Morning takes us to a small town in Abruzzo where […]
Dark is the Morning by Rupert Thomson: An evocative tale of rural Italy Read More »
June’s paperback preview begins with one I was sure would appear on the Women’s Prize for Fiction list. Set during Italy’s Years of Lead, marked by violent clashes between the extreme Left and Right, Olivia Laing’s The Silver Book follows Nicholas who’s fled London for Venice. After a chance encounter with costume and set designer,
Paperbacks to Look Out For in June 2026 Part One Read More »
I’m not a Mahler fan but put up my hand as soon as I spotted Robert Seethaler’s brief novella, The Last Movement, which sees the composer on his last transatlantic voyage to Europe, a few months before his death. I’ve read all four of Seethaler’s translated novels, beginning with A Whole Life over a decade
This month’s snapshot includes one for ardent David Bowie fans, a pandemic novel but don’t let that put you off, and a collection of short stories which begins with a brief novella set in Manhattan. The short story collection I’m reading is Lore Segal’s Ladies’ Lunch and Other Stories of which I’ve only read the titular
A Snapshot of My Reading #15 Read More »
June’s second fiction preview begins with one I took a punt on largely because of the publisher, World Editions, whose list is always interesting. Kit Fan’s Goodbye Chinatown explores events in Hong Kong since the 1997 handover through the experience of Amber whose parents brought her to London after the horrors of Tiananmen Square in
Books to Look Out For in June 2026: Part Two Read More »
As Elizabeth Strout fans will already know, The Things We Never Say is a standalone novel set in a small Massachusetts town rather than Crosby, Maine with which we’ve become so familiar. Spanning several years either side of the 2024 presidential election, it follows Artie Dam, a popular high school history teacher whose life is
Elizabeth Arnott’s The Secret Lives of Murderers’ Wives caught my eye on NetGalley with its arresting cover, but it was its 1960s California setting that swung it for me together with a mention of Mad Men in the blurb. It has an interesting premise, too: three women, all once married to convicted serial killers, are
Lots of goodies to look out for in June beginning with one from a favourite author of mine. In Ann Patchett’s Whistler, Daphne and her husband are visiting a museum before Jonathan sets off for Wisconsin to help his sister clear their late mother’s house. The dapper elderly man so interested in Daphne turns out
Books to Look Out For in June 2026: Part One Read More »
Six Degrees of Separation is a meme hosted by Kate over at Books Are My Favourite and Best. It works like this: each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six others to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the titles on the list,
Six Degrees of Separation – Wild Dark Shore to This is Happiness Read More »
This is the latest in a series of occasional posts featuring books I read years ago about which I was wildly enthusiastic at the time, wanting to press a copy in as many hands as I could. Ghostwritten was published in my last year as a bookseller when I’d become a little jaded with sales
Blasts from the Past: Ghostwritten by David Mitchell (1999) Read More »
H had been wanting to go back to Paris for some time but I wasn’t so keen; then a friend raved about an art deco exhibition she’d seen there. That, and her reassurance that queues to see the newly restored Notre Dame weren’t nearly so horrendous as I assumed, convinced me to go. Walking down
Four Days in Paris and Two Books Read More »