Book news, reviews and recommendations
After a disappointing start, it seems I’m back on a reading roll this month – What in God’s Name, Lamb, The Small Hours, The Last Banquet and now, Ethan Hauser’s The Measures Between Us, have all hit the spot. Set against the backdrop of a storm-hit small town just outside Boston, it opens with a […]
The Measures Between Us by Ethan Hauser: An impressive, eloquently melancholy novel Read More »
Purely coincidentally, I’ve been reading N. M. Kelby’s White Truffles in Winter about the last days of the celebrated chef Escoffier alongside Jonathan Grimwood’s The Last Banquet, set in pre-Revolutionary France. Both are about Frenchmen with a passion for food who love and admire women, both have recipes scattered through them and both men are
It took me a little while to get into The Small Hours – its style seemed a little brittle and the language almost old fashioned – but after a chapter or so it became clear that this was precisely the right tone for Harriet who narrates the novel in an internal dialogue which is at
The Small Hours by Susie Boyt Read More »
Reading in the garden after the two or three washouts which passed as summers over the last couple of years feels like being on holiday. It’s not just the glorious sunshine it’s the absence of distraction allowing you to immerse yourself in whatever you’re reading. I’ve just finished Bonnie Nadzam’s Lamb, much of it read
Lamb by Bonnie Nadzam: An unsettling and brilliant debut Read More »
This is not a post about lascivious, sensual reading matter: instead it’s the title of a list of books many readers have given up put together by Goodreads. Given my recent disappointments mentioned in Friday’s post I headed off to have a look and found many all too familiar titles – Moby Dick, Gravity’s Rainbow
The Most Abandoned Books Read More »
It has been a sad and rather unsettling experience reading The Quarry. Anyone with even the most fleeting interest in the book world knows that Iain Banks died from cancer in early June, a mere few months after being diagnosed, and those who have read the reviews of his final novel know that one of
The Quarry by Iain Banks: Unsettlingly true to life Read More »
I’ve given up a lot of books recently. It used to feel like a moral failing leaving a book unfinished but I’ve finally realised that it’s a complete waste of time hoping that something which hasn’t gripped you by page 50 will eventually blossom. I’ve already confessed to giving up Flight Behaviour in Monday’s post
What in God’s Name by Simon Rich: Short, sweet and very funny Read More »
Sorting out books after my hols I came across a copy of Letters to Klaus from the children’s publisher Anderson Press, published as part of the Independent Booksellers Week promotion which began last Friday. It’s brilliant and entirely original. Klaus Flugge launched Anderson Press in 1976, naming it after Hans Christian Anderson, and went on
Letters to Klaus by Klaus Flugge: A twofa or maybe a threefa Read More »
Back from my Sussex hols the highlights of which were undoubtedly two gorgeous gardens – Great Dixter and Charleston Farmhouse – both the kind that look as if they’ve been causally thrown together although anyone who knows anything about gardening, and I know very little, understands that this kind of planting is the product of
Holiday reading ups and downs Read More »
I’m a sucker for biographical notes and always disappointed when they merely list previous books with a tight little sentence about where the author lives if you’re lucky. Partly nosiness on my part I’ll admit but often a little knowledge of an author’s life illuminates their writing. Reading one of Roma Tearne’s novels without knowing
The Road to Urbino by Roma Tearne: Last night I dreamt… Read More »
Not to beat about the bush – there’s a lot of sex in Carrie Tiffany’s novel and most of it not ornithological. I only mention it as the reviewer I commissioned to write about it when it came out in hardback emailed me to say that it was all too much for her. I was