Book news, reviews and recommendations
A multitude of books will no doubt be published this year commemorating the outbreak of World War I, many of them novels adding to the already substantial body of fiction devoted to it including Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy, Sebastian Faulks’ Birdsong, Louisa Young’s My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You and Erich Maria Remarque’s All […]
Wake by Anna Hope: My first Great War novel of 2014 Read More »
Old women are not a particularly common subject for contemporary fiction. They’ve been memorably portrayed in several books I’ve read by established authors – Helen Dunmore’s Enid in Burning Bright, Liz Jensen’s Gloria in War Crimes for the Home and Lesley Glaister’s Trixie in The Private Parts of Women for instance, and Angela Carter’s sassy
The Night Guest by Fiona McFarlane: Tiger, tiger burning in the night Read More »
I seem to be spending reading time across the water this week, more by accident than design it has to be said. After Michèle Forbes’ Belfast-set Ghost Moth earlier in the week Donal Ryan’s second novel, The Thing About December, took me south of the border to rural Ireland, my expectations ratcheted up by the
The Thing about December by Donal Ryan: Greed and what it does to the soul Read More »
Only four books into the year and two have already aroused strong feelings. David Vann’s Dirt was not a happy experience nor, I’m sure, was it meant to be given that it’s a study in what happens when parents smother their children in controlling affection, but the final section in which the mother gets her
Ghost Moth by Michèle Forbes: A beautifully expressed debut Read More »
Hard for any committed reader to resist a novel with the title Books, particularly one which comes with a hearty recommendation from Jim Crace. In it Charlie Hill lampoons everyone in the book trade, from publishers to booksellers, literary editors to authors, bloggers (how dare he!) to publicists and adds a swipe at performance artists
Books by Charlie Hill: Jasper Fforde meets Black Books Read More »
A very happy New Year to you all! I’m afraid this is going to be a ‘what I did on my holidays’ post although there will be a mention of books. H and I took off from Bristol on Christmas Eve for Amsterdam after a slight delay, blissfully unaware of the mayhem that was playing
Five Days in Amsterdam and One book Read More »
The jacket of Merethe Lindstrom’s beautifully written, quietly devastating novel suits it perfectly: the door of an almost empty room opens onto another room, opening onto another, all in varying shades of grey. It’s narrated by Eva and begins with an intruder, a young man who asks to use her phone when she is at
Back in 2009, after a long and illustrious career as a novelist, Margaret Drabble called time on writing fiction, following her announcement with the publication of The Pattern in the Carpet, a kind of memoir through jigsaws that I have yet to read but which I’m told is very good. Surprisingly, then, this year saw
The Pure Gold Baby by Margaret Drabble: A second swansong? Read More »
This is my fourth literary trip to Iceland this year – Hannah Kent’s impressive debut Burial Rites, Sarah Moss’s Names for the Sea and Michel Rostain’s novel/memoir The Son all took me there in one way or another and now Auđur Ava Ólafsdóttir’s quirky novel Butterflies in November. It opens with the killing of a
Set at the end of the nineteenth century, Equilateral opens in the Egyptian desert where nine hundred thousand Arab fellahin labour to create a vast equilateral triangle which will be seen from Mars, so Sanford Thayer, celebrated astronomer and instigator of the project, has calculated. Inspired by Giovanni Schiaparelli’s maps based on his observations of
Equilateral by Ken Kalfus: A tale of folly, madness and Martians Read More »
I have to confess that I hadn’t heard of And Other Stories until a copy of Ivan Vladislavić’s Double Negative dropped through my letterbox. They’re a not-for-profit organisation who publish books funded by subscriptions from the likes of you and me, readers keen to support new writing and happy to pay an annual subscription for
Double Negative by Ivan Vladislavić from And Other Stories: A new approach to publishing Read More »