Book news, reviews and recommendations
Treading the Uneven Road is one of those books I was in two minds about. The author approached me directly which always feels very personal; there’s the worry that an appealing sounding book won’t live up to its promise and might not even get finished let alone reviewed. Given that you’re reading this, it’s clear […]
Treading the Uneven Road by L. M. Brown: Life on a small stage Read More »
Four things attracted me to Andrew Cowan’s Your Fault: its working class, ‘60s setting; its unusual structure; its length and its publisher, Salt Publishing whose list is never anything but interesting. Set in one of those new towns beloved by British town planners of the mid-twentieth century, Cowan’s novella has fifty-five-year-old Peter tell his story
Your Fault by Andrew Cowan: A boy’s life Read More »
I’ve not read anything by Laura Beatty before but I found Lost Property’s synopsis intriguing. A woman finds herself in a state of despair at her country’s apparent indifference to the suffering and poverty on its streets and decides she must find a way to understand how such a state has come about. This witty
Lost Property by Laura Beatty: A road trip through history in search of meaning Read More »
Some of you may have noticed that I’m attracted to novels about immigrants. The theme has an entry all to itself in my occasional Five Books I’ve Read series. I’ve lived my life in just one country which is perhaps why I’m so curious about how it might feel to leave your homeland, not always
If I Had Two Lives by Abbigail N. Rosewood: Belonging, and not belonging Read More »
You may already know Meike Ziervogel’s name. She’s the founder of Peirene Press who publish three thought-provoking novellas in translation a year, several of which I’ve reviewed on this blog. Flotsam’s not her first book but it’s the first I’ve read by her. Set on the German coast in the 1950s, Ziervogel’s strange, unsettling novella
Flotsam by Meike Ziervogel: More than meets the eye Read More »
We booked a short break back in March thinking that it might be our last chance to join the EU citizen passport queue but once again we were reprieved. Or at least that’s how I think of it. This time we were heading for Genoa, home of two of my favourite things to eat: focaccia
Almost Four Days in Genoa and One Book Read More »
This is the third novel I’ve read from this year’s Man Booker International Prize longlist. The other two are Hubert Mingarelli’s Four Soldiers, beautifully translated by Sam Taylor, which didn’t make it onto the shortlist, and Olga Tokarczuk’s quirky Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of The Dead, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, which did alongside
The Pine Islands by Marion Poschmann (transl. Jen Calleja): To the north Read More »
I wrote a post about friendship a little while ago, part of my Five Books I’ve Read series, beginning it by saying how few novels there seemed to be about friendship, and fewer still about male friendship, at least in my reading experience. Paolo Cognetti’s The Eight Mountains offers a corrective to that. At its
Given my weakness for small town American novels and an immigration theme I had a shrewd idea I’d enjoy Laila Lalami’s The Other Americans just from its title. It explores the fallout from a hit and run accident which kills Driss Guerraoui, a Moroccan immigrant who had been running his restaurant in the Californian desert
The Other Americans by Laila Lalami: Modern America in the Mojave Read More »
I finished my review of Jen Beagin’s sharp, funny Pretend I’m Dead happily anticipating what she might come up with next. What I wasn’t expecting was a sequel. Two years after the love of her life disappeared, Mona’s finding herself becoming more intimate with her clients and not necessarily in a good way. Mona’s still
Vacuum in the Dark by Jen Beagin: Mona reprised Read More »
I remember being very impressed by Tash Aw’s debut, The Harmony Silk Factory, which was surrounded by a great deal of hype when it was published back in 2005 but for some reason I’d not got around to reading anything else by him until We,The Survivors turned up. Set in rural Malaysia, it tells the
We, The Survivors by Tash Aw: Confession of a decent man Read More »