Susan Osborne, at A Life in Books

The Pine Islands by Marion Poschmann (transl. Jen Calleja): To the north

19 April 2019 / 6 Comments

This is the third novel I’ve read from this year’s Man Booker International Prize longlist. The other two are Hubert Mingarelli’s Four Soldiers, beautifully translated by Sam Taylor, which didn’t make it onto the shortlist, and Olga Tokarczuk’s quirky Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of The Dead, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, which did alongside […]

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Cover image for The Eight Mountains by Paolo Cognetti

The Eight Mountains by Paolo Cognetti (transl. Simon Carnell and Erica Segre): Enduring friendship

17 April 2019 / 17 Comments

I wrote a post about friendship a little while ago, part of my Five Books I’ve Read series, beginning it by saying how few novels there seemed to be about friendship, and fewer still about male friendship, at least in my reading experience. Paolo Cognetti’s The Eight Mountains offers a corrective to that. At its

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Books to Look Out for in May 2019: Part Two

15 April 2019 / 22 Comments

May’s second batch of new titles begins with Linda Grant’s A Stranger City which seems to use the discovery of a body in the Thames to explore the nature of community in London, or the lack of it, through a policeman, a nurse and a documentary-maker. ‘The wonderful Linda Grant weaves a tale around ideas

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The Other Americans by Laila Lalami: Modern America in the Mojave

12 April 2019 / 16 Comments

Given my weakness for small town American novels and an immigration theme I had a shrewd idea I’d enjoy Laila Lalami’s The Other Americans just from its title. It explores the fallout from a hit and run accident which kills Driss Guerraoui, a Moroccan immigrant who had been running his restaurant in the Californian desert

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Vacuum in the Dark by Jen Beagin: Mona reprised

10 April 2019 / 6 Comments

I finished my review of Jen Beagin’s sharp, funny Pretend I’m Dead happily anticipating what she might come up with next. What I wasn’t expecting was a sequel. Two years after the love of her life disappeared, Mona’s finding herself becoming more intimate with her clients and not necessarily in a good way. Mona’s still

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Books to Look Out for in May 2019: Part One

8 April 2019 / 19 Comments

April was a wee bit light on new titles for me, making up for it with a plethora of paperbacks to keep an eye on. In contrast May sees me spoilt for choice with a very attempting array of new novels on offer beginning with Jessica Andrews’ debut, Saltwater, which follows a young woman from

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Six Degrees of Separation – from How to Be Both to Mãn

6 April 2019 / 23 Comments

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 other books to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the others on the

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We, The Survivors by Tash Aw: Confession of a decent man

5 April 2019 / 12 Comments

I remember being very impressed by Tash Aw’s debut, The Harmony Silk Factory, which was surrounded by a great deal of hype when it was published back in 2005 but for some reason I’d not got around to reading anything else by him until We,The Survivors turned up. Set in rural Malaysia, it tells the

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Liar by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen (transl. Sondra Silverston): Truth will out

3 April 2019 / 7 Comments

Look at that jacket. Isn’t it tempting? It was its premise that attracted me to Ayelet Gundar-Goshen’s novel but I can’t ignore that cover. Not only is it eye-catching, it fits the book perfectly. Set towards the end of a Tel Aviv summer, Liar tells the story of a young girl who becomes caught up

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Blasts from the Past: Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels (1996)

1 April 2019 / 31 Comments

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 into as many hands as I could. Fugitive Pieces is one of those excellent books that sold satisfyingly well when I was a bookseller. I

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Show Them a Good Time by Nicole Flattery: An idiosyncratic collection

29 March 2019 / 17 Comments

I’d heard good things about Nicole Flattery’s Show Them a Good Time well before publication, not in a shouty in-your-face, can’t-get-away-from-it kind of way but enough to snag my attention. Then I spotted Jon McGregor’s and Sally Rooney’s comments, both clearly smitten with Flattery’s writing. I’m still not entirely sure what to make of it

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