Book news, reviews and recommendations
I snapped up Brandon Taylor’s new novel as soon as it appeared on NetGalley having very much enjoyed The Late Americans. Minor Black Figures spans a Manhattan summer following Wyeth, a black artist, and his relationship with Keating who he meets one night in a bar after visiting the opening of the latest glitzy identity […]
Minor Black Figures by Brandon Taylor: Art for art’s sake Read More »
I’d not read either of Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s previous novels, drawn to Almost Life by the blurb’s comparison with David Nicholls’s One Day half expecting to be disappointed. Spanning thirty-five years, it follows Laure and Erica who meet one summer morning in 1978 on the steps of Sacré Coeur when Erica smiles at Laure after
Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave: ‘There is nothing we could not do together’ Read More »
Those of you with long memories might recall M. L. Stedman’s debut, The Light Between Oceans, published in the UK back in 2012. I loved it which made me keen to read her new one, A Far-flung Life. Largely set in the 1950s and ‘60s on a sheep station in Western Australia, it follows the
I’d not come across Stephanie Sy-Quia before a proof of A Private Man turned up. She’s an award-wining poet which predisposed me towards reading it. Like many debut novelists, Sy-Quia draws on her family history and, as the granddaughter of a Catholic priest, hers is a fascinating one. A Private Man tells the story of
A Private Man by Stephanie Sy-Quia: ‘There are many different ways to have an affair.’ Read More »
I dithered over Debra Curtis’s Laws of Love and Logic which sounded from the blurb as if it might be a straightforward tragic love story. There was also a worrying degree of brouhaha around it but I decided to take the plunge. Spanning three decades, beginning in the 1976, Curtis’s debut follows Lily, the elder
Laws of Love and Logic by Debra Curtis: ‘Guilt is both long and cruel’ Read More »
I went back and forth on whether to read Madeline Cash’s Lost Lambs, partly the cover, partly the emphasis on humour, but I read a few reviews one of which emphatically told ditherers like me to get on with it. Cash’s novel follows the supremely dysfunctional Flynn family shortly after Catherine, frustrated with her life
Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash: An enjoyable romp Read More »
I was looking for something reasonably untaxing when Erin Somers’s novel popped up on NetGalley. Set in gentrified smalltown America, The Ten Year Affair follows Cora, Sam and their families through a decade after they meet and instantly click at a baby group. She thought Eliot and Sam would get along. She could picture their
The Ten Year Affair by Erin Somers: Will they won’t they? Read More »
I remember lots of brouhaha around Australian writer Madeleine Gray’s debut, Green Dot, but its premise didn’t appeal to me. Chosen Family looked much more interesting. It follows two friends, misfits at their all-girls school, who become platonic, cooperative parents of a daughter, determined to be better at the job than their own parents despite
Chosen Family by Madeleine Gray: You always hurt the one you love Read More »
That lovely cover caught my eye on NetGalley before I realised that Patrick Charnley is the son of the much-missed Helen Dunmore, one of my favourite authors. This, My Second Life is Charnley’s debut which starts with a sobering author’s note telling his readers that while this is a novel, the narrator’s cardiac arrest and
This, My Second Life by Patrick Charnley: A doubly poignant debut Read More »
This is the fourth review of a Bryan Washington book I’ve posted here, beginning with Lot, his collection of short stories back in 2019. Palaver follows an unnamed mother and son over the few weeks she pays him an unexpected and unwelcome visit in Tokyo where he’s been living for over a decade. I think,
Palaver by Bryan Washington: Home is where the heart is 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 in as many hands as I could. Fiction is too often written off as escapism, but it can illuminate ways of life and beliefs that
Blasts from the Past: The Romance Reader by Pearl Abraham (1995) Read More »