Book news, reviews and recommendations
I was casting around for a spot of diversion after a string of excellent but particularly dark novels when Nell Stevens’ Mrs Gaskell and Me arrived. I’d been eyeing it up for a little while, wondering if I’d enjoy it and now seemed the perfect time to find out. Stevens’ account of her doctoral research […]
Mrs Gaskell and Me by Nell Stevens: A little light relief Read More »
Henry Beston’s The Outermost House is something of an American nature classic, an account of the year he spent living on a beach near Eastham, Massachusetts not far from the very tip of Cape Cod in the 1920s. This new edition comes with charming illustrations by Pete Smith who also designed its beautiful jacket. An
The Outermost House by Henry Beston: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod Read More »
Back in 2015 I reviewed Lorna Gibb’s first novel, A Ghost’s Story, a fascinating exploration of belief and longing to believe set against the backdrop of nineteenth-century spiritualism. I follow her on Twitter so knew she was writing something about childlessness and hoped I’d be offered it for review. It’s a state she and I
Childless Voices by Lorna Gibb: Stories of Longing, Loss, Resistance and Choice Read More »
This is the kind of book I’d have had stacked up at till points back in my bookselling days, aiming it squarely at the Christmas stockings of the bookish. It brought to mind Jorge Carrión’s Bookshops which I reviewed here a few years ago but Browse is much more of a book to dip into.
Browse: Love Letters to Bookshops Around the World edited by Henry Hitchings Read More »
I used to read a lot of travel writing before it was taken over by authors carting kitchen appliances round with them as a gimmick. I blame Bill Bryson: enjoyable as his books were they seemed to foster a demand for comedy in the genre, not an accusation to be made of Adam Weymouth, I’m
One of the many good things about shadow judging this award is that it’s made me review non-fiction. It’s not that I don’t read it but the last book I reviewed that wasn’t fiction was back in May. Laura Freeman’s The Reading Cure was already in my sights before the shortlist was announced but if
The slightly gushy letter that prefaces Meg Fee’s book of essays (at least in my proof copy) made me wonder if it would be for me but its premise – a young woman finding her way in New York City, always a lure – made me press on. Fee’s short pieces cover thirteen years, a
Places I Stopped on the Way Home by Meg Fee: Growing pains in New York Read More »
Eating out is one of my favourite things. It can be sociable or not, a treat in itself or a quick bite before the cinema, something to round off a day on holiday or a step off the interminable wheel of everyday cooking. Whatever the occasion, there’s always a feeling of pleasurable anticipation which is
I wasn’t at all sure about Strange Labyrinth when it turned up – it looked like a book that didn’t quite know what it was supposed to be about – but once started I was hooked, enchanted even. It tells the story of Epping Forest, the six thousand acres on the edge of London saved
Strange Labyrinth by Will Ashon: If you go down to the woods today… Read More »
I was drawn to Volker Weidermann’s Summer Before the Dark partly because of its translator, Carol Brown Janeway, who died last year. It was her work which made me understand that the translator is every bit as important as the author when seeking out books in translation. This may well be her last piece of
So much has been said about Paul Kalanithi’s account of the twenty-two months from his diagnosis with lung cancer to his death at the age of thirty-six that I’m not sure what I can add of any value except to tell you emphatically to read it. This week sees its paperback publication in the UK.
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi: Bearing witness Read More »