Book news, reviews and recommendations
It took me some time to get around to reading Brandon Taylor’s Real Life thanks to the hype surrounding it when it was first published but I enjoyed it when I did, certainly enough to read The Late Americans whose premise also appealed. Reading like a series of intricately linked short stories, Taylor’s thought-provoking novel […]
The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor: Finding your way in the world Read More »
The premise of Caroline O’Donoghue’s The Rachel Incident reminded me of Belinda McKeon’s Tender which I loved but was stunned to find I’d reviewed back in 2015. The novels turned out to have little in common besides being written by Irish women about the relationship between a young straight woman and her gay male friend.
The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue: Paging Netflix Read More »
This second instalment of July’s new fiction has more chunksters than usual beginning with one I wasn’t sure I’d read. Despite feeling somewhat disappointed by Mary Beth Keane’s Ask Again, Yes I put my hand up for The Half Moon mostly because of that cover. Set in a small New York town, it follows the
Books to Look Out For Out for in July 2023: Part Two Read More »
No amount of obsessive weather app checking eased my packing anxiety before heading north. Last year’s Manchester trip had everything from snow to what felt like a mini heatwave, something Glasgow was apparently experiencing while Leeds, our first stop, looked distinctly chilly. We were staying in the city’s legal district very close to the civic
Three Days in Leeds, Five Days in Glasgow and One Book Read More »
Back from the not so chilly north (more of that on Friday) with a novel I snapped up as soon as I spotted it on NetGalley. I’ve been a fan of Daniela Krien’s understated writing since I read Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything back in 2015. Not such a lengthy gap between Love in
The Fire by Daniela Krien (Transl. Jamie Bulloch): Discovering who you are Read More »
July’s the month when holiday reading kicks in with a vengeance in the publishing schedules. There’s some of that in the second part of my July preview but on the whole my taste for what to read when away doesn’t tend to chime with publishers’ suggestions. That said I’m kicking off with a title which
Books to Look Out For in July 2023: Part One 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 into as many hands as I could. Barry Unsworth’s Morality Play is set in the late fourteenth century, a time of calamitous upheaval. The country
Blasts from the Past: Morality Play by Barry Unsworth (1995) Read More »
It was its structure that attracted me to Ore Agbaje-Williams’ debut. Set over one day, The Three of Us is told from three points of view: a wife, a husband and the best friend who has known the wife since school. Lots of room there for unreliable narrators and tense relationship dynamics. She was the
June’s second batch of paperbacks begins with two novels by Irish writers, one of which I’ve read the other, the other I’m keen to read. Opening with a beginning and an end Donal Ryan’s The Queen of Dirt Island follows four generations of women in one unconventional household. Left to bring up her daughter alone,
Paperbacks to Look Out For in June 2023: Part Two Read More »
I was delighted to spot Sheila Armstrong’s first novel in the publishing schedules having been so impressed with her short story collection, How to Gut a Fish. That had a touch of the surreal about it which I half expected from Falling Animals, given it’s slightly disconcerting, rather lovely cover, but Armstrong’s novel is not
Falling Animals by Sheila Armstrong: For those in peril on the sea Read More »
I finally got around to reading Caleb Azumah Nelson’s Costa First Novel Prize-winning Open Water just before putting my hand up for a copy of Small Worlds. Like many bloggers I follow, I was very taken with it. Hard to imagine that Small Worlds would be better but, for me, it was. Beginning in 2010,
Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson: A place of safety and love Read More »