Cover image for Water in the Desert Fire in the Night by Gethan Dick

Water in the Desert Fire in the Night by Gethan Dick: The end of the world as we know it

I was a bit doubtful about Gethan Dick’s debut when it was pitched to me. Dystopian fiction doesn’t usually appeal but it’s published by Tramp Press, a small Irish indie whose books I’ve enjoyed in the past. Water in the Desert Fire in the Night follows a disparate group of people, neighbours on a London […]

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Cover image for Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford

A Snapshot of My Reading #4

This month’s snapshot includes a novel which disappointed several bloggers whose opinions I trust, a short story collection by an International Booker Prize longlisted author and a memoir by a museum guard. The novel I’m reading is Francis Spufford’s Light Perpetual which I started yesterday so it’s early days. It begins with a devastating event

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Cover image for Dream State by Eric Puchner

Dream State by Eric Puchner: ‘Marriage, the only adventure open to the cowardly’  

I’m sucker for author endorsements from favourite writers. Eric Puchner’s Dream State comes with lots of them including Danielle Evans and Andrew Sean Greer, but it was Alice McDermott’s that swung it for me. It’s a doorstopper which takes its readers from wedding preparations in the late twentieth century through to the mid-twenty-first before coming

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Cover image for What a Time to be Alive by Jenny Mustard

What a Time to Be Alive by Jenny Mustard: A quietly accomplished, coming-of-age novel

I read Jenny Mustard’s debut, Okay Days, back in 2023. Unflashy, perceptive and absorbing, it’s a thoroughly enjoyable novel which made me happy to put up my hand when What a Time to be Alive popped up on NetGalley. A coming-of-age story, it follows Sickan who’s changed her name from Siv hoping to reinvent herself

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