Book news, reviews and recommendations
Kim over at Reading Matters has decided to devote her reading life to OzLit this year and I’m looking forward to discovering some Aussie writers hitherto unknown to me. We in the UK tend only to read the headline acts such as Peter Carey and Tim Winton, I suspect. The same could be said of […]
Under the Visible Life by Kim Echlin: Friends forever Read More »
I already had Lena Andersson’s Wilful Disregard in my sights but when Charlotte Collins, translator of the excellent A Whole Life, left a comment praising it to the skies on my January paperback preview it zoomed up my list. She called it ‘the cleverest dissection of misguided obsession that I’ve ever read’, a spot on
Reading’s second nature to me. I don’t even remember learning how to do it. I know I arrived at infants’ school fully equipped so my mum must have taught me although, curiously, I do remember being taught to write there. Both my parents read voraciously and, in my ignorance, I’d assumed that everyone in the
Happy Birthday Quick Reads! Read More »
A new Helen Dunmore’s always a treat for me. Regular visitors may have noticed that she’s the writer I cite when complaining about the ratio of acclaim given to male and female writers. Exposure has already garnered much in the way of review coverage but when it comes to ranking writers in the contemporary literary
Exposure by Helen Dunmore: A Cold War tale of love, betrayal and espionage Read More »
Two things attracted me to Gail Jones’ new novel: its Berlin setting – a city with which I’m almost as infatuated as I am with New York as a backdrop – and the prospect of the elegantly, poetic writing I’d enjoyed so much in her previous novels. I liked the synopsis, too: six people –
A Guide to Berlin by Gail Jones: An homage to Nabokov Read More »
Slim pickings for January Books Read (But Not Reviewed) – just two books and, unusually for me, both are non-fiction. Regular readers will know that this blog is all about recommendations – books I’d be happy to give to a friend – and indeed I did give this one to a friend for her birthday
Books Read (But Not Reviewed) in January 2016 Read More »
I have a weakness for debuts. There’s always the hope that I’m about to be introduced to an author who will make their mark or take me somewhere I haven’t been before. It’s not unusual, either, for a writer’s first novel to be their best. Perhaps it’s all that time spent perfecting the writing, none
Love Me Back by Merritt Tierce: A startlingly accomplished debut Read More »
I’ve been hoping for a new novel from Francesca Kay for quite some time now. I enjoyed both of her previous books which explore the nature of passion – An Equal Stillness looks at the way in which the prosaic everyday grind of marriage and parenthood can stifle creativity while The Translation of Bones examines
The Long Room by Francesca Kay: A study in loneliness and obsession Read More »
Female friendship is a frequent theme in fiction, or at least what’s often dubbed as ‘women’s fiction’ – a label best avoided in my view. It can be more than a little idealised but that’s not an accusation that could be levelled at Rachel B. Glaser, for sure. Her first novel, Paulina & Fran, is
Paulina & Fran by Rachel B. Glaser: Friendship, warts and all Read More »
Back in what passed for a summer here in the UK, I read Sean Michaels’ Us, Conductors which told the story of Leon Theremin, inventor of the strange musical instrument that bears his name. Thoroughly enjoyable, it has what remains one of the best lines I’ve read in fiction for some time: ‘I had never
The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt by Tracy Farr: A theremin reprise Read More »
Readers of a certain age may remember Midge Ure moodily singing ‘Vienna’ on Top of the Pops way back when. So embedded in our consciousness did it become for H and me that whenever one says ‘it means nothing to me’ the other pipes up ‘Oh, Vienna’. We both managed to keep it under control
Four Days in Vienna and One Book Read More »