Book news, reviews and recommendations
Recently shortlisted for this year’s International Booker Prize, the first book in Solvej Balle’s septology comes garlanded with praise from a wide range of writers including Jon McGregor whose endorsement swung it for me; that and its intriguing premise. On the Calculation of Volume 1 follows Tara Selter who wakes up every morning to find […]
Quite a mixture this month including one from a much-loved author with a long career behind her and two others by writers I’d not come across before. The novel I’m reading is My Husband by French writer Maud Ventura (transl. Emma Ramadan) in which the narrator is still in the grips of obsessive passion for
A Snapshot of My Reading #3 Read More »
I’m starting off the first instalment of May’s fiction with two novels I’ve already read the first of which is Catherine Chidgey’s The Book of Guilt. Largely set in an alternate version of 1979, close to reality but unsettlingly different, it follows a set of thirteen-year-old triplets living in a children’s home in the New
Books to Look Out For in May 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 – Knife to Any Human Heart 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. Victoria Glendinning is best known for her literary biographies of such luminaries as Rebecca West, Vita Sackville-West and
Blasts from the Past: Electricity by Victoria Glendinning (1995) Read More »
Louise Hegarty’s debut, Fair Play, had such an intriguing premise I put up my hand as soon as I spotted it on NetGalley. She’s also a Stinging Fly contributor which always sways me in an author’s favour. For several years Abigail has arranged a murder mystery weekend to celebrate her brother’s birthday which falls on
Fair Play by Louise Hegarty: An inventive take on cosy crime Read More »
When I first discovered Elizabeth Strout’s writing, the UK editions of her books came with off-putting, wish-washy covers. Fortunately, they were reissued by another publisher with much more appropriate jackets and Strout became a household literary name. Four of the following five are also by American writers, several likely much better known in the US
Five Novels by Underrated Writers I’ve Read Read More »
Almost three years ago I reviewed Benjamin Markovits’s The Sidekick, a surprising choice for me as there’s a good deal about basketball in it but I enjoyed it enough to accept the offer of a review copy of The Rest of Our Lives. Billed appealingly as a road novel, it follows fifty-five-year-old Tom Layward whose
The Rest of Our Lives by Benjamin Markovits: A mid-life odyssey Read More »
When I’m feeling particularly depressed about the state of the world, I remind myself that equal marriage has been enshrined in law for over a decade here in the UK and has been legalised in many other countries. Set in a small Welsh village in the late 1980s, not so very long ago, Anthony Shapland’s
A Room Above a Shop by Anthony Shapland: A love story Read More »
I’m beginning with the only one I’ve read from this second instalment of April paperbacks. Narrated by the self-deprecating Rocky, Catherine Newman’s Sandwich spans a week in the holiday let she and her husband have rented for almost twenty years. They and their grown-up children cram themselves into the tiny cottage, joined later by Rocky’s
Paperbacks to Look Out For in April 2025: Part Two Read More »
Theft is Abdulrazak Gurnah’s first novel since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021. Described as ‘one of the world’s most prominent postcolonial writers’ by the chairman of the Nobel committee, he continues to explore that theme through three young people in 1990s Zanzibar, his native country, whose lives become closely intertwined. He would
Theft by Abdulrazak Gurnah: A multi-layered exploration of postcolonialism Read More »