Book news, reviews and recommendations
My sense of time has been off during the pandemic: sometimes an event seems as if it was just the other day, others years ago, both assumptions often prove to be wrong. Perhaps that’s why I was surprised to spot a new Elizabeth Strout in the publishing schedules, convinced that Olive, Again was only published […]
Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout: ‘We are all mysteries, is what I mean’ Read More »
Hospital dramas abound on TV – Holby City, Gray’s Anatomy, ER, House to name but a few. Not as ubiquitous as crime but oddly it’s rarely a theme in fiction. This post isn’t all about hospitals but it does explore something which affects every one of us, not least over the long pandemic. Here, then,
Five Books I’ve Read with a Medical Theme Read More »
Back in 2017 I reviewed Domenico Starnone’s Ties, remarking on its explosive opening letters from a furious wife to her unfaithful husband. It was Jhumpa Lahiri’s translation that attracted me to the novel but it was my enjoyment of it that made me put my hand up for Trust. As Lahiri notes in her afterword,
Trust by Domenico Starnone (transl. Jhumpa Lahiri): A life in three parts Read More »
I swore I wouldn’t read a pandemic novel then ended up reading two before the summer was out. Hard to resist when one of them was Sarah Hall’s Burntcoat which neatly steers clear of our own pandemic, telling the story of Edith who survives the novavirus but knows that her time is limited. As all
Burntcoat by Sarah Hall: ‘Those who tell stories survive’ Read More »
I loved Amor Towles Rules of Civility but, for some reason that I can’t now remember, could not get on with A Gentleman in Moscow at all. That didn’t stop me from putting my hand up for a proof of The Lincoln Highway whose stylish jacket seemed to offer the prospect of a road novel,
The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles: A 1950s American odyssey Read More »
I’ve written about my ambivalence towards Lauren Groff’s writing before in a review of her last novel, Fates and Furies, back in 2015 and so when Matrix arrived I wasn’t at all sure about reading it, even more so given its twelfth-century setting. Groff’s novel is her reimagining of the life of Marie de France,
Matrix by Lauren Groff: ‘An island of women’ Read More »
A new Colm Tóibín always shines out like a beacon for me so I was delighted to be offered a proof of The Magician. Like his Booker-shortlisted The Master, which fictionalised the life of Henry James, Tóibín’s novel is about a towering literary figure, Thomas Mann, a writer I knew little about having only read
The Magician by Colm Tóibín: The complicated life of Thomas Mann Read More »
Slim pickings for October’s paperback preview, sadly. I’m beginning with the only one I’ve yet to read – Tish Delaney’s Before My Actual Heart Breaks which is about Mary who grew up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Five children and a quarter of a century later, she’s finally glimpsed a chance of the happiness
Paperbacks to Look Out For in October 2021 Read More »
Back in 2013, I wrote about meeting Beatrice Hitchman at what was supposed to be a summer afternoon Pimms party in a neighbour’s garden, unsurprisingly relocated to their living room thanks to the British weather. Hitchman’s debut, Petite Mort, was just about to be published. I enjoyed it very much and was delighted when All
All of You Every Single One by Beatrice Hitchman: Choosing your own family Read More »
I started seeing Sarah Gilmartin’s Dinner Party in my Twitter timeline a good eight or nine months before it was due to be published, something that tends to put me off more often than not, but I liked the sound of this novel that begins with the titular gathering then explores the fraught family dynamics
Dinner Party by Sarah Gilmartin: A tragedy Read More »
I spotted Anthony Veasna So’s short story collection, Afterparties, on Twitter quite some time ago and was delighted when a copy dropped through my letterbox. Just as Souvankham Thammavongsa’s wonderful collection, How to Pronounce Knife, explored the experiences of the Laotian diaspora through its second generation, So’s is about young Cambodian-Americans whose parents and grandparents
Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So: ‘Generational Differences’ Cambodian-American style Read More »