Book news, reviews and recommendations
Here we go again – new year, well almost, and shiny new books too salivate over, beginning with one I’ve already read. Susan Stokes-Chapman’s much-trailed debut, Pandora, is set in Georgian London in the final year of the 18th century. This tale of orphans, evil uncles, stolen antiquities and ancient curses sees Dora trying to […]
Books to Look Out for in January 2022: Part One Read More »
This is my last review of 2021 and rather like Wednesday’s A Ghost in the Throat, it’s an unusual one for me in that it’s non-fiction and, not only that, it’s a collection of essays, not something I often read. I’m going to try to pick just a few cherries from Ann Patchett’s These Precious
These Precious Days by Ann Patchett: Living well Read More »
This is my penultimate review for 2021 and it’s an unusual one. Recently published in paperback, Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat made quite a splash back in 2020, winning three awards and shortlisted for several others. Having read it, I can see why. A memoir of obsession, literary detection and motherhood, it’s
A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa: ‘This is a female text’ Read More »
We’re on the final straight which is chock full of novellas crammed into October and November thanks to my new found (relative) freedom which included a week in Edinburgh and another short break in London. I was in two minds about accepting my first October pick. Lauren Groff’s Matrix is a reimagining of the life
Books of the Year 2021: Part Four Read More »
By May, things were looking up on the out-and-about front. H and I squeezed two holidays into three months, beginning with one in London in mid-May and Sussex at the beginning of July, which may explain the number of novellas in this post beginning with Ailsa McFarlane’s Highway Blue. When Cal turns up two years
Books of the Year 2021: Part Three Read More »
By March I’d usually have been talking about spring but even my perennial Pollyanna tendencies had been flattened by a pandemic winter, dank and dreary with few bright days to enjoy. One of the novels that kept my mind of things was Claire Fuller’s Unsettled Ground which explores the darker side of rural life through
Books of the Year 2021: Part Two Read More »
Not such a strange year as 2020 but far from back to normal either. There’ve been many more outings and much more socialising but reading and blogging continued to keep me going through the more difficult parts of 2021. Perhaps partly as a result of that, I’ve failed to get my books of the year
Books of the Year 2021: 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 – From Ethan Frome to When God Was a Rabbit Read More »
I take occasional digs on here at the hype which pervades Twitter where every book is super fabulous but it has to be said I’m often grateful when a book is flagged I might have otherwise missed. Huma Qureshi’s Things We Do Not Tell the People We Love is a case in point. Comprising nine
It was its structure that attracted me to Neil Bartlett’s Address Book. It’s a set of seven loosely linked short stories each of which takes place in London in different times and different situations, all sharing the themes of home, belonging and love. I usually pick out the best of the bunch with short story
Address Book by Neil Bartlett: Seven stories of love and belonging 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 into as many hands as I could. The pleasures of reading fiction are many and varied but broadly speaking they tend to fall into two
Blasts from the Past: Eucalyptus by Murray Bail (1998) Read More »