Fiction Reviews Archives - Page 98 of 123

Cover image for The Power of the Dog by Thomas Savage

The Power of the Dog by Thomas Savage: Entirely deserving of its Stoner comparison

11 March 2016 / 8 Comments

First published in 1967 and now reissued as a rediscovered classic, Thomas Savage’s novel comes lauded to the skies by the likes of Nicholas Shakespeare, who claims it’s better than Stoner, and Annie Proulx, who rates it sufficiently to have written a lengthy afterword. It also came with a health warning from its publicist who

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This Living and Immortal Thing by Austin Duffy: Of mice and men

9 March 2016 / 13 Comments

Hospital dramas abound on TV – Holby City, Gray’s Anatomy, ER, House – they’re not quite as ubiquitous as crime but it seems odd that they’re notable by their absence from fiction given their enduring popularity. Its setting was partly what attracted me to Austin Duffy’s novel; that and the fact that he’s a practising

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His Whole Life by Elizabeth Hay: One big happy family

4 March 2016 / 11 Comments

Elizabeth Hay’s Late Nights on Air ranks alongside Siri Hustvedt’s What I Loved as one of the finest contemporary novels I’ve read. Notable for its beautiful descriptions of the natural world, Hay’s novel shows a similar perception in its portrayal of relationships as Hustvedt’s. It’s one of those novels I pressed into the hands of

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Books Read (But Not Reviewed) in February 2016

2 March 2016 / 12 Comments

Both novels read (but not reviewed) in February sit in similar territory but each is very different from the other. You may have already read Delphine de Vigan’s No and Me. It was a Richard and Judy choice way back in 2010 so I’m a little late to the party but I can see why

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My wish list for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2016

29 February 2016 / 21 Comments

Here we go again and in my middle-aged way I can’t believe it’s that time already. The Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist is due to be announced next Tuesday. Only novels written by women in English published between April 1st 2015 and March 31st 2016 qualify for the award. It’s one of the few

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The Ballroom by Anna Hope: Both chilling and humane

24 February 2016 / 18 Comments

Anna Hope’s debut was one of those novels in the tidal wave of fiction set around the First World War back in 2014. Set in 1920, Wake stood out for me as being a cut above the others with its exploration of the way in which women’s lives had been affected by the war. I

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My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout: Loneliness and how to survive it

19 February 2016 / 32 Comments

Sometimes you want to tell everyone you know just how good an author is, press their books into as many hands as possible. I’ve felt that way about Elizabeth Strout’s writing for some time. My proof copy’s jacket proclaims her ‘the greatest American writer you’ve never heard of’. That may be less true than it

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Under the Visible Life by Kim Echlin: Friends forever

17 February 2016 / 23 Comments

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

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Cover image for Wilful Disregard by Lena Andersson

Wilful Disregard by Lena Andersson (transl. Sarah Death): None so blind as those who will not see

12 February 2016 / 16 Comments

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

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Happy Birthday Quick Reads!

8 February 2016 / 8 Comments

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

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Exposure by Helen Dunmore: A Cold War tale of love, betrayal and espionage

5 February 2016 / 13 Comments

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

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