Book news, reviews and recommendations
Whereas the first part of April’s paperback preview had its feet firmly planted in the States, this second instalment wanders around Europe beginning in the UK with Elizabeth Day’s The Party. Scholarship boy Martin Gilmour meets Ben Fitzmaurice at Burtonbury School, becoming firm friends with him despite their wildly differing backgrounds. Over the next twenty-five […]
Paperbacks to Look Out For in April 2018: Part Two Read More »
There’s a puff from Patrick Gale on the jacket of Ruth Figgest’s debut. It’s not one of those slightly gushy quotes with a few too many superlatives to feel sincere. It simply says ‘Ruth Figgest knows how to make a story’ which at first may seem too far the other way but by the time
Magnetism by Ruth Figgest: Families and how to survive them Read More »
I’ve a somewhat chequered history with Donal Ryan’s writing. While I enjoyed The Spinning Heart and The Thing About December I couldn’t work up the ecstatic enthusiasm so many other readers were voicing. Then I read All We Shall Know which made it on to my 2016 books of the year list. It’s early days,
From a Low and Quiet Sea by Donal Ryan: Love, loss and connection Read More »
A new Peirene is always a treat but I was particularly keen to read Soviet Milk written by a Latvian author born in 1969, twenty years before the fall of the Berlin Wall which resulted in her country’s liberation. I visited the Baltic states several years ago and was struck by each of the three
Soviet Milk by Nora Ikstena (transl. Margita Gailitis): Freedom at last Read More »
This may sound obvious to seasoned readers of literature in translation but one of the things I’ve learned to look out for is the name of the translator as well as the author. The penny dropped when I noticed how many of the translations I’d enjoyed were by the late Carol Brown Janeway. Now I’d
Lots of paperbacks to anticipate eagerly this April which is when, I hope, we can expect spring to take off here in the UK unless there’s another little winter reprise. For no reason other than my own convenience, I’ve divided this month’s preview geographically into America then Europe which is where all the titles are
Paperbacks to Look Out For in April 2018: Part One Read More »
Like that old joke about buses, after not reading a novel by a New Zealand author in a very long time I’ve read two in just over a month – first C. K. Stead’s The Necessary Angel and now Fiona Kidman’s All Day at the Movies. I remember reading a post at Word by Word
All Day at the Movies by Fiona Kidman: The story of a family Read More »
I’m sure most of you have already heard of The Immortalists. It’s been everywhere in my neck of the Twitter woods, not something that always bodes well. It’s been on my own radar for so long I can’t even remember how it got there but I suspect it was the very clever hook on which
The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin: Living or merely surviving? Read More »
Fewer new April titles have snagged my attention than I’d hoped, although there were so many at the beginning of the year that may not be such a bad thing. I’ll start with the Gun Love by Jennifer Clement, author of the impressive Prayers for the Stolen, published in the UK a few years ago.
Books to Look Out for in April 2018 Read More »
I suspect Lisa Halliday’s debut is a Marmite book. It depends on whether you’re happy with the idea of a novel which encompasses two discrete narratives rounded off with a brief final section in which neither is overtly brought together or not. Bear with me, this is a tricky book to write about but if
Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday: A novel in three parts Read More »
This is the third book I’ve read by Judith Hermann. Like Alice, the first, Letti Park is a collection of short stories comprising seventeen pieces, some just a few pages long. All three books are characterised by the delicacy of their writing but unlike the stories in Alice which are linked by the theme of