Susan Osborne, at A Life in Books

Monsieur le Commandant by Romain Slocombe (transl. Jesse Browner): A wartime confession

27 September 2013 / 1 Comment

Romain Slocombe’s epistolatory novel, Monsieur le Commandant, is the most difficult novel I’ve read in some time. It’s published by Gallic Books whose wonderful feel good The President’s Hat has been top of my list of books to press upon other readers this year. Monsieur le Commandant also deserves a wide audience but for entirely […]

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Familiar by J. Robert Lennon: Same, same but different

25 September 2013 / Leave a Comment

I’ve been looking forward to J. Robert Lennon’s new novel having been a fan for some time. This one has a particularly daring premise and a very startling opening. As scientist Elisa Macalaster Brown makes her way home from her annual visit to her son’s grave in their old home town she experiences something strange

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Seven days in Spain and Two Books

23 September 2013 / Leave a Comment

More loafing than walking was done this holiday thanks to temperatures in the high twenties. We were staying just outside Ferreirola, one of the Taha villages of the Alpujarras, at a smallholding run by the warm and very welcoming Surya. Part of the deal was a gorgeous garden complete with a hammock from which H

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Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking by Anya von Bremzen: Food, family and history all served up on a plate

12 September 2013 / Leave a Comment

With an ironic nod to Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, food writer Anya von Bremzen and her mother set about recreating a series of meals emblematic of ten decades of Russian and Soviet cooking rather like Julia Powell’s tribute to her (almost) namesake in Julie and Julia. Von Bremzen and her mother

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The Messiah of Stockholm by Cynthia Ozick: A shortish post about a short book

11 September 2013 / Leave a Comment

Cynthia Ozick’s The Puttermesser Papers was one of those books that made me think I’d hit gold – an interesting author with a nice long backlist – so I was delighted to see that Atlantic were reissuing The Messiah of Stockholm, dubbed her masterpiece, particularly as it’s about literature. Lars is the Monday book reviewer

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Burial Rites by Hannah Kent: One book leads to another

10 September 2013 / 13 Comments

I started Burial Rites in the anything but quiet carriage on our way to London on Saturday. Set in 1829, it’s based on the case of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last person to be executed in Iceland. Convicted of the murder of Natan Ketilsson and Pétur Jónsson, Agnes is to be lodged until her execution with

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Nine Days by Toni Jordan: A cleverly constructed heartbreaker

6 September 2013 / Leave a Comment

If you’re the kind of reader that trawls through all the bits and pieces at the start of a book – the dedication, review quotations and credits, biographical notes (often at the back but useful to know while you’re reading a novel) – you’ll spot Toni Jordan’s note telling you that Nine Days was inspired

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The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer: More than lives up to its title

4 September 2013 / 1 Comment

Having read all but one of her novels I was looking forward to Meg Wolitzer’s new book. It has the kind of structure much beloved by film and TV writers – a group of young people form an enduring friendship which survives the buffeting of adulthood and all that the outside world throws at it

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Bookish social media and unsociable e-books

2 September 2013 / Leave a Comment

It was announced last week that ebooks made up 20% of Random House’s sales worldwide in the first six months of this year. Zillions of readers have enthusiastically embraced the digital age and with good reason. Social media and books work beautifully together; since blogging I’ve had the kind of exchanges that I’ve missed having

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Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami (transl. Allison Markin Powell): Judging a book and its cover

30 August 2013 / 2 Comments

This slim, beautifully written novel begins one evening when, ordering a meal at a bar, Tsukiko sits next to an elderly man who chooses exactly the same dish. She recognises him as her teacher from her secondary school days but cannot remember his name saying nothing until he notices her. To cover her embarrassment she

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The Glass Ocean by Lori Baker: Garlanded with well deserved praise

28 August 2013 / 4 Comments

I started The Glass Ocean on Sunday evening. Twenty pages in and nothing had stuck. It seemed a little disjointed somehow; snippets of glittering prose shone out but I couldn’t seem to get a purchase on it. Monday afternoon, after a lovely Bank Holiday walk through woods near Iford Manor – too soon for tea,

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