Book news, reviews and recommendations
Last year in Madrid I spotted a copy of Leaving the Atocha Station in a bookshop only metres from said station and thought about buying it then got distracted. Much talked about on publication, it’s Ben Lerner’s first novel – 10:04 is his second and it’s narrated by a writer whose first novel was much […]
10:04 by Ben Lerner: ‘Neither fiction nor nonfiction, but a flickering between them’ Read More »
Carnaby Street, mini-skirts, coffee bars and rock n’ roll: these are some of the things that make up the glossy vibrant Swinging Sixties we see portrayed on our TV screens in nostalgic documentaries. Flip that coin and you’ll find something nasty – racism and fascism alive and kicking almost twenty years after the Second World
Ridley Road by Jo Bloom: Fascism and anti-fascism in the ‘60s East End Read More »
When Will Boast shows a writer friend a fictionalised version of his family history she tells him ‘If you put all that in, no one will believe it’. Perhaps she might have said no one would want to believe it for much of his story is too sad, striking too close to home. By the
Epilogue by Will Boast: You wouldn’t make it up Read More »
This is the third of the three novels that I agreed to look at for an author, and of the three, it’s the one I would have been least likely to come across if Tamim Sadikali hadn’t sent me a copy. It’s from a publisher I’d never head of before – Hansib – although when
Dear Infidel by Tamim Sadikali: A deeply unsettling read Read More »
Given my ‘bah humbug’ attitude to Christmas it may seem a bit odd to fly off to the country which pretty well invented many of the UK’s most beloved festive bits and bobs: markets, fairy-lit trees and mulled wine come to mind. Hamburg might seem an even stranger choice – hardly top of most tourists’
Five Days in Hamburg and a few books Read More »
Surprisingly, all but one of the paperbacks that catch my eye this January have already been reviewed here which gives my credit card a welcome break, if nothing else. I’ll start with one of my books of 2014: Jessie Burton’s The Miniaturist, much-hyped before, during and after its publication but deservedly so. Set in seventeenth-century
Paperbacks to Look Out for in January 2015 Read More »
I’ve read some sad books this year – I Refuse and Academy Street spring to mind – but none as sad as Suzanne McCourt’s The Lost Child set in small town Australia. At one stage I thought I might have to give it up but her writing is so impressive that I decided to tough
The Lost Child by Suzanne McCourt: Best read when cheerful Read More »
After Jenny Erpenbeck’s intricately constructed The End of Days I felt the need for some good old-fashioned straightforward storytelling and Celeste Ng’s debut seemed to fit the bill. Set in 1977, it’s the story of a family whose oldest daughter disappears one night. A few days later the police arrive with the awful news that
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng: A perfectly named debut Read More »
Back at the beginning of the year I wrote a post about #readwomen2014 which had caught my eye on Twitter. It was set up in an attempt to redress the lamentable imbalance between the coverage of books written by women as opposed to books written by men. As both an ex-reviews editor and a woman
#ReadWomen2014: Redux Read More »
I suspect The End of Days is a bit of a Marmite novel: you’ll either marvel at the way Jenny Erpenbeck deftly handles the constant shifts in narrative throughout this complex novel or you’ll despair of ever keeping track. Just as Jane Smiley sets out to tell the story of an American century through the
I’ve been meaning to read Thomas E. Kennedy’s Copenhagen Quartet for some time and was sent a copy of the final instalment recently. This might seem an odd place to start a series but I’d been assured that all the novels stand alone, as indeed this one did although I am left wondering if I’ve
Beneath the Neon Egg by Thomas E. Kennedy: A Scandi novel written by an American Read More »