Book news, reviews and recommendations
October’s a little light on eye-catching titles for me although for the second year running we’re being treated to a new Elizabeth Strout featuring Lucy Barton which came as a surprise. Lucy by the Sea sees her leaving New York City for lockdown life in Maine with the ex-husband she was reunited with in last […]
Books to Look Out For in October 2022 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 – Bridget Jones’s Diary to The Devils of Loudun Read More »
I’m an enthusiastic fan of Joan Silber’s fiction having loved both Improvement and Secrets of Happiness and was delighted to find that not one but two of her backlisted books were to be published here in the UK. Both come billed as linked short stories, my favourite kind of collection. I’ve plumped to review Fools
Fools by Joan Silber: More please (reprised)! Read More »
Two things attracted me to Joanna Campbell’s Instructions for the Working Day: firstly, its setting in the old East Germany which I’ve visited a few times; secondly, Claire Fuller’s puff extolling its virtues. Set in a dilapidated village, Campbell’s novel follows Neil Fischer who has inherited this settlement from his father whose childhood home it
Instructions for the Working Day by Joanna Campbell: The high cost of freedom Read More »
I often read for the writing as much as for storytelling and although I rarely read poetry, I’ve found that novels by poets are often written with a pleasing attention to language, each word carefully chosen and not one wasted. Below are five favourite novels by poets, all with links to my reviews. Helen Dunmore
Five Novels I’ve Read by Poets Read More »
Almost everything I review on here that’s not fiction is about travel, food or books which tells you something, I guess. Journalist and essayist Rebecca May Johnson’s Small Fires is about cooking and the kitchen – very appropriate given that I’ve recently undergone the upheaval of having our kitchen completely renovated after thirty years –
Small Fires by Rebecca May Johnson: Much spattering in the kitchen Read More »
I was attracted by the blurb for Colleen Hubbard’s Housebreaking which suggested a satisfyingly dysfunctional family set up. It also seemed appropriate given that I had a houseful of builders when I read it, thankfully doing the opposite of Hubbard’s main protagonist who hits on a novel way to prevent the family she detests from
Housebreaking by Colleen Hubbard: Tearing down the house Read More »
The tiniest handful of paperbacks for September, perhaps the smallest selection I’ve ever posted, and none of them making me reach urgently for my credit card. I’ll begin with Peter Cameron’s What Happens at Night, set in the depths of winter as a couple travel to a European city to adopt a baby, beset by
Paperbacks to Look Out For in September 2022 Read More »
Donal Ryan is one of those authors whose name makes my heart sing when I see it in the publishing schedules. The Queen of Dirt Island popped up quite some time before it was due to be published and I snapped it up on NetGalley. Opening with a beginning and an end, it follows four
The Queen of Dirt Island by Donal Ryan: ‘Time will wind its own sweet way’ Read More »
I couldn’t resist C. E. Riley’s Is This Love? after reading the blurb: the story of a marriage breakdown is told by one of the parties whose gender is never revealed through a narrative addressed to their wife interspersed with diary entries plus transcripts of her testimony to her solicitor. Something of a daring structure
Is this Love? By C. E. Riley: Who’s telling the truth here? Read More »
The first part of September’s preview began with Kate Atkinsons’s Shrines of Gaiety, an unmissable novel for me, and I’m almost as keen to read A. M. Homes’ The Unfolding, a state of the American nation novel by the sound of it. Stunned by the result of the 2008 election, The Big Guy decides to
Books to Look Out For in September 2022: Part Two Read More »