Book news, reviews and recommendations
July see the summer reading season in full swing for publishers with lots of novels aimed at entertaining readers by the pool. Unusually for me, I’m beginning with one that fits that bill well. Liza Klaussmann’s This is Gonna End in Tears is set in the summer of 1984 when a few chickens come home
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The first part of June’s paperbacks started with a novel hyped to the skies ahead of publication as does the second, although this time it’s a debut. Set in a prestigious New York publishing house, Zakiya Dalila Harris’ The Other Black Girl follows Nella, the only Black employee on the editorial staff until Hazel is
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Enough June paperbacks to more than make up for the lack of new titles that caught my eye I’m pleased to say, beginning with a book surrounded by huge amounts of brouhaha last year. Readers would have to have been living on Mars not to know about Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You. She’s
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Back from lovely Italy (more of which later in the week) with a disappointingly short June preview although I have read four of the eight that caught my eye so those come tried and tested beginning with the one that’s most likely to be on readers’ radars already. Miriam Toews’ Fight Night takes the form
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Whereas I’d read all the books in the first part of May’s paperback preview, I’ve only managed two in the second, starting with Joan Silber’s Secrets of Happiness which begins with the sudden revelation of the second family of an apparently happily married man. Ethan and Allyson took their parents’ happiness for granted until the
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With the exception of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, I’m not such an avid follower of literary prizes as I once was although I can’t seem to resist speculating about the Booker. That said, this year’s shortlist is making me think I need to keep an eye on the Rathbones Folio Prize, two titles from
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The second instalment of May’s new fiction kicks off with Georgi Gospinov’s Time Shelter. There are a multitude of novels about dementia but Gospinov’s takes a very different tack with its ‘clinic for the past’ offering rooms set up to mirror various time periods. As the rooms become more authentic, the healthy and wealthy book
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Lots of tempting books to look out for in May before the summer reading bonanza begins when fewer books tend to snag my attention. I’ll begin with Benjamin Myers’ The Perfect Golden Circle, one I’m keen to read having enjoyed The Offing with its beautiful descriptive writing. Myers’ new novel is set in 1989 when
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Just one post for April’s paperbacks which includes five I’ve already read, beginning with a novel by an author who doesn’t get nearly the attention she deserves. Georgina Harding’s Harvest is the third in a loosely linked trilogy about the Ashe family and echoes both The Gun Room and Land of the Living in its
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Part one of April’s preview had a nice little Celtic theme running through it whereas part two is much more of a hodge-podge thematically so I’ll start with the three I’ve already read. Five years ago, I reviewed Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan Beach, noting that it was seven years since her Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit from
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Less new fiction than I’d hoped to look out for in April but still enough to fill a two-part preview kicking off with one for which I was champing at the bit once I saw it all over Twitter. Set in early ‘90s Glasgow, Booker Prize-winning Douglas Stuart’s Young Mungo is about the youngest son
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