Book news, reviews and recommendations
With spring on the horizon here in the UK, perhaps more in hope than in reality after last week’s storms, I’m starting March’s paperback preview with two books that should raise a smile. Set in a small American town, Katherine Heiny’s Early Morning Riser follows Jane who meets the handsome Duncan when she locks herself […]
Paperbacks to Look Out For in March 2022: Part One Read More »
Telling a city’s story through a single building and its inhabitants is such an appealing device. Żanna Słoniowska did it memorably with Lviv in The House with the Stained-glass Window. Emma Harding’s Friedrichstrasse 19 takes a similar tack with the added lure of exploring the history of Berlin, always a favourite setting, through the lives
Friedrichstrasse 19 by Emma Harding: ‘You will endure. What else can we do?’ Read More »
This is the second novel I’ve reviewed this year with a backdrop of The Troubles. Set in the 1979 on a tiny remote Irish island rather than in a 1993 Ulster village, Audrey Magee’s The Colony is very different from Jan Carson’s The Raptures. Two men make their way to the island, planning to spend
The Colony by Audrey Magee: Two sides of the story Read More »
There was a definite family theme running through much of the first part of March’s fiction preview; this second part is more of a mixed bag although it does start with a novel about a family, and an infamous one at that. As I say all too often on here, then promptly read the exception
Books to Look Out for in March 2022: Part Two Read More »
I’m a sucker for novels about long term relationships, the complicated kind rather than the reasonably straightforward happy ones although they, too, have their turbulent moments. Marijke Schermer’s Love, If That’s What It Is looked right up that particular alley with its story of the breakdown of Terri and David’s 25-year marriage, told from the
I’m a big fan of debuts, always hoping to read something by an author whose career I can settle into and enjoy. It doesn’t always pay off but sometimes I come across one that I have to keep reminding myself is a first novel such is the assurance and accomplishment of the writing. Daphne Palasi
Brown Girls by Daphne Palasi Andreades: Growing up brown in Queens Read More »
Things are looking up in my part of the world with spring on the, albeit distant, horizon and some great new fiction on offer in March beginning with Charlotte Mendelson’s The Exhibitionist, seven years in the writing according to the letter that accompanied my proof. Artists Ray and Lucia Hanrahan have been together for decades.
Books to Look Out for in March 2022: 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 – No One is Talking About This to Piranesi Read More »
It’s seems an age since I reviewed Hannah Kent’s debut, Burial Rites. For a long time, it was one of my most visited posts and I’ve never been able to work out why. Despite enjoying it, I didn’t get around to The Good People but enthusiastically accepted when I was offered Devotion. Both her previous
Devotion by Hannah Kent: ‘My life was only ever a hand’s breadth’ Read More »
I was the reviews editor at Waterstone’s Books Quarterly when Louise Welsh’s The Cutting Room was published 20 years ago. I wasn’t particularly inclined to read it, not being a crime fiction fan, but of course needed to for work and what a treat I’d have missed if I hadn’t. The star of the show
The Second Cut by Louise Welsh: Rilke’s return Read More »
Part two of February’s paperback preview is something of a mixed bag, albeit an interesting one, beginning with. David Annand’s Peterdown which tells the story of a town through two people on opposing sides of a plan to redevelop it. Ellie is an architect determined to save a modernist estate shortlisted as a property to
Paperbacks to Look Out for in February 2022: Part Two Read More »