Book news, reviews and recommendations
Fiction Uncovered was set up in 2011 with the aim of promoting British writing. Last year with the support of a charitable foundation it became the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. It’s an unusual award in that there are eight winners including, this year, Jo Mazelis’s Significance. I’m more than a little late to the party […]
Significance by Jo Mazelis: A Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize 2015 winner Read More »
Well, this is a first for me – a review of a graphic novel. Back in my early bookselling days I was pretty sniffy about this particular genre which appeared to consist almost entirely of rather lurid fantasy novels: catnip to shoplifters or so it seemed. I’m not sure I sold one in all the
The Inflatable Woman by Rachel Ball: Ways without words Read More »
Three Jane Smileys in a year seems a little greedy but once started on The Last Hundred Years Trilogy all thoughts of delayed gratification go out of the window. For those who haven’t yet come across the first two, the trilogy tells the sometimes torturous history of the United States through the story of an
Golden Age by Jane Smiley: Or is it? Read More »
I’ve been a fan of Colum McCann’s novels since way back in the late ‘90s when I read This Side of Brightness. His fiction ranges far and wide – from Dancer’s Rudolf Nureyev to the Roma of Zoli – and his writing is often strikingly poetic. Unsurprisingly, then, I’ve been looking forward to his new
Thirteen Ways of Looking by Colum McCann: A novella and three stories Read More »
Lucia Berlin’s short story collection seem to be everywhere at the moment – her beautiful face shines out from broadsheet reviews, her book sits at the front of every bookshop I’ve been in recently – yet her work isn’t new. She died in 2004 having written intermittently over a long period stretching back to the
A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin: Saving some for later Read More »
It’s been quite some time since I’ve read a new Margaret Atwood – a little too much dystopia in her later novels for me – but the synopsis of The Heart Goes Last appealed: homeless couple in the nearish future signs on for a project where they alternate a month in prison with a month
The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood: Fun with dystopia Read More »
I noticed The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty being talked about recently on Twitter by someone whose taste I admire. The title seemed familiar and I wish I could tell you that it was because it’s from one of Rumi’s poems – revealed half-way through the novel – but I have to admit it was already
I’m quite a fan of bloggers’ monthly reading recaps so thought I might try it myself. As ever, I’ll only include books I feel are worth recommending so should this become a regular feature they’re unlikely to be long posts. I almost gave up Ellen Ullman’s By Blood, mainly because it has a curiously antiquated
Books Read (But Not Reviewed) in September 2015 Read More »
Petina Gappah’s An Elegy for Easterly caused quite a stir when it was published back in 2009. Lots of rave reviews, then it won the Guardian First Book Award, but aside from commissioning a review for the magazine I was working on I ignored it. Short stories, you see. More fool me, if The Book
The Book of Memory by Petina Gappah: Teasing out the threads Read More »
I’m not a natural Lauren Groff fan. The writing I most admire is the pared back prose of Colm Tóibin, Kent Haruf and John McGahern – Groff’s is baggy, extravagant, almost baroque at times, yet there’s something about it that sucks me in. I read The Monsters of Templeton when I was a reviews editor,
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff: A much tastier curate’s egg Read More »
It’s always tricky disentangling a writer’s life from his fiction when you know that his narrator’s biography overlaps with his own. It’s all too easy to extend that overlap as you read, difficult to draw the line. South African by birth, Justin Cartwright is the descendent of Piet Retief whose search for fertile land took
Up Against the Night by Justin Cartwright: A South African curate’s egg Read More »