Book news, reviews and recommendations
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 […]
Water in the Desert Fire in the Night by Gethan Dick: The end of the world as we know it Read More »
This first batch of June’s paperbacks has a distinctly Irish flavour beginning with one of my books of last year. Christine Dwyer Hickey writes beautifully crafted thoughtful novels, often from the perspective of women. Our London Lives is set against the backdrop of a vividly evoked London following Milly, eighteen and pregnant when she arrives
Paperbacks to Look Out For in June 2025: Part One Read More »
I’ve reviewed three of Anna Hope’s previous four novels, starting with Wake over ten years ago. They’ve all been very different, and her fifth continues that trend. Albion spans five days as the Brooke family bury the man who has wielded so much influence over their lives, faced with both the future and the past
Albion by Anna Hope: Facing up to the past Read More »
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
A Snapshot of My Reading #4 Read More »
I’ve yet to read anything from this second instalment of June fiction which begins with the one I’m most interested in. Inspired by real events, Heather Clark’s The Scrapbook opens in Harvard in 1996 where Anna meets and falls in love with a German student just before graduation. Visiting Christoph at his home in Germany,
Books to Look Out For in June 2025: Part Two Read More »
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
Dream State by Eric Puchner: ‘Marriage, the only adventure open to the cowardly’ Read More »
I had two reasons to feel a little superstitious about our Ghent trip: firstly, we’d planned to go in March 2020 days before lockdown at home – Belgium got there before us – and secondly the last time I travelled on Eurostar we both caught covid. H and I gathered our courage and set off
Three Days in Ghent and One Book Read More »
I’ve read all but two from June’s first batch of new fiction beginning with a novel I snapped up as soon as it appeared on NetGalley. Boogie was only eighteen when their rackety mother left her two daughters with him in Wendy Erksine’s The Benefactors. He raised them both, never distinguishing between Misty and his
Books to Look Out For in June 2025: 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 – Rapture to The Gun Room Read More »
May’s first paperback preview was a bit of a mishmash but this one has a marriage/relationship theme running through it, albeit mostly unhappy, beginning with Sarah Manguso’s Liars, one of my books of last year. It’s the story of a broken marriage told from the perspective of Jane whose relationship with John grows out of
Paperbacks to Look Out For in May 2025: Part Two Read More »
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
What a Time to Be Alive by Jenny Mustard: A quietly accomplished, coming-of-age novel Read More »