Fiction Reviews Archives - Page 2 of 120

Cover image for A Private Man by Stephanie Sy-Quia

A Private Man by Stephanie Sy-Quia: ‘There are many different ways to have an affair.’

4 March 2026 / 17 Comments

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 […]

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Laws of Love and Logic by Debra Curtis: ‘Guilt is both long and cruel’

27 February 2026 / 14 Comments

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

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Cover image for Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash

Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash: An enjoyable romp

4 February 2026 / 14 Comments

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

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Cover image for The Ten Year Affair by Erin Somers

The Ten Year Affair by Erin Somers: Will they won’t they?

30 January 2026 / 10 Comments

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

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Cover image for Chosen Family by Madeleine Gray

Chosen Family by Madeleine Gray: You always hurt the one you love

28 January 2026 / 16 Comments

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

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Cover image for This, My Second Life by Patrick Charnley

This, My Second Life by Patrick Charnley: A doubly poignant debut

23 January 2026 / 10 Comments

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

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Cover image for Palaver by Bryan Washington

Palaver by Bryan Washington: Home is where the heart is

16 January 2026 / 12 Comments

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,

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Cover image for The Romance Reader by Pearl Abraham

Blasts from the Past: The Romance Reader by Pearl Abraham (1995)

2 January 2026 / 10 Comments

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

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Cover image for A Meal in Winter by Hubert Mingarelli

Five Winter Books I’ve Read

1 December 2025 / 38 Comments

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

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Cover image for Before the Leaves Fall by Clare O'Dea

Before the Leaves Fall by Clare O’Dea: Choosing when to die

26 November 2025 / 21 Comments

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

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Cover image for Lightbreakers by Aja Gabel

Lightbreakers by Aja Gabel: ’A story of impossible things made possible’

21 November 2025 / 10 Comments

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,

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