Book news, reviews and recommendations
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 »
The Five Summer Books post in this series proved very popular; I suspect this one won’t attract quite so much attention. Most of us prefer basking in a bit of summer sun if we get the chance but the five books below might make you feel glad to be cosy and inside on a bleak
Five Winter Books I’ve Read Read More »
Having enjoyed Voting Day, Clare O’Dea’s debut, I was delighted to be send a copy of Before the Leaves Fall. Both novels are set in Switzerland where she lives and both are published by Fairlight Books, a small indie who also publish one of my favourite writers, Douglas Bruton. As you may have gathered from
Before the Leaves Fall by Clare O’Dea: Choosing when to die Read More »
I wasn’t sure about reading Aja Gabel’s Lightbreakers: the premise was attractive, but the blurb suggested elements of SF/Fantasy that I might have trouble with, more my understanding than anything else. It follows Noah who’s been invited to take part in what is essentially a time travel experiment funded by a billionaire, and his wife,
Lightbreakers by Aja Gabel: ’A story of impossible things made possible’ Read More »
Despite her extensive back catalogue which includes five works of fiction, I’d never read anything by Gish Jen. Her new, difficult-to-categorise book, Bad Bad Girl, is the story of her mother’s life in which Jen imagines conversations, seeking answers to questions her mother would never give. It’s a novelisation, leaning very much towards memoir but,
Bad Bad Girl by Gish Jen: A novel with some truth in it Read More »
Having written a couple of these posts on Irish fiction, it’s time for a few Scottish favourites, some written in such rich dialect I could hear it as I read. There’s a real skill to that kind of writing as anyone who’s read a cringe-makingly poor version of it will know. Here then are five
Five Scottish Novels I’ve Read Read More »