Book news, reviews and recommendations
It was partly the setting that attracted me to Sarah Perry’s first novel – I love Norfolk’s huge sky and lovely coastline – but the blurb was enticing, too, and I don’t say that very often. A middle-aged man exhausted by the seemingly endless heat wave that’s hit London shuts up shop and heads off […]
Xiaolu Guo’s ambitious new novel is neither easy to read nor to write about. It’s a jigsaw puzzle of a love story, chock-full of well-aimed barbs fired at Chinese politics past and present, and it takes some getting into but don’t let that put you off – it’s well worth the effort, a book that
I am China by Xiaolu Guo: A love story in fragments Read More »
The immigrant experience is a rich theme for fiction, one which offers many of us a glimpse into a world that we will never know and, I would like to think, fosters a level of empathy and tolerance apparently unknown to many tabloid editors with their pernicious headlines. Cristina Henríquez’s brilliantly named The Book of
I’ve never been the girly type and would’ve been first in the booksellers’ queue muttering did we really need another book about the Kennedys – although mercifully with no mention of Marilyn Monroe – so my attraction to The Pink Suit may seem a little odd but I’d enjoyed Nicole Mary Kelby’s White Truffles in
The Pink Suit by Nicole Mary Kelby: A love affair with style Read More »
A few years ago Random House began publishing novellas under the Hammer imprint. They’re all either horror or ghost stories – hardly a surprise given the connotations of the name – but what is surprising are some of the authors they’ve commissioned to write for them. I’ve already read Helen Dunmore’s The Greatcoat, a subtle,
Touched by Joanna Briscoe: A Touch of the Horrors Read More »
There’s always a niggling worry that a second novel won’t quite live up to a debut as impressive as Harriet Lane’s chilling Alys, Always but I’m pleased to say that Her doesn’t disappoint. It’s a one-sitting, riveting read: a dual narrative as cleverly controlled as a Maggie O’Farrell – queen of that particular form –
Her by Harriet Lane: A very fine psychological thriller Read More »
I’d love to board a train at my local station and travel all the way to the Dolomites by rail but that would entail a good deal of time, organisation and probably money so we did the next best thing and flew from our local airport to Munich where we spent our first evening having
Walking in the Dolomites, the pleasures of the pudding buffet and a few books Read More »
Reading fiction in translation offers us a glimpse into different worlds, cultures that we can never experience ourselves no matter how sophisticated modern travel has become. That’s exactly what Elvira Dones’s Sworn Virgin does, taking us to the mountains of Northern Albania where the clan system is deeply embedded, blood feuds confine families to their
Sworn Virgin by Elivira Dones (transl. Clarissa Botsford) Read More »
Along with Harriet Lane’s Her which I’ll be reviewing in a few weeks, this is the book I had been most looking forward to in the June publishing schedules. It’s not entirely true, although that wouldn’t trip of the tongue as a title, but it is splendid. Michelle Lovric has transplanted the story of the
At first glance The Vacationers didn’t appeal – beach reads aren’t my kind of thing – but it’s published by Picador (one of my favourite imprints), Then, Naomi at The Writes of Women tweeted approvingly about it and annethology also seemed keen so I quit prevaricating and started reading. It seems they were right: Emma
The Vacationers by Emma Straub: An intelligent beach read Read More »
There was a great deal of marketing hoo-ha around Nick Harkaway’s first novel which always makes me wary, so much so that I avoided it but when Angelmaker was published so many readers whose opinions I respect jumped up and down proclaiming it a masterpiece that I though I’d better take a dekko. It’s a
Tigerman by Nick Harkaway: A thriller with a sense of humour and a heart of gold Read More »