Book news, reviews and recommendations
August can be a dull month for new fiction given that the holiday season is in full swing but this first instalment starts off with a novel that’s far from boring although it may not suit everyone. Nicola Barker’s TonyInterruptor explores the fallout from a question shouted from the audience at a jazz gig which […]
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Back from Yorkshire (more of which later in the week) with the last of July’s previews. It’s a long time since I read Dinaw Mengestu’s All Our Names but it’s stayed with me as did Children of the Revolution. His new novel, Someone Like Us, follows Mamush who returns to his Ethiopian community in Washington
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This first batch of July paperbacks leans more towards the commercial than usual starting with David Nicholls whose writing always hits the spot for me. His new one, You Are Here, sees Marnie feeling stuck and Michael left by his wife. A determined mutual friend succeeds in getting them to take a walk together which,
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I’ve read two from this second selection of July’s new fiction beginning with one I’d not expected to enjoy as much as I did. Opening in the early 2000s, Alexander Starritt’s Drayton and Mackenzie follows James Drayton and Roland Mackenzie who met briefly at Oxford. Driven and intensely competitive, even with himself, James is the
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This first batch of new fiction is full of books I’m not entirely sure about but look worth a try, beginning with Kate Sawyer’s Getting Away which is aimed squarely at the summer reading market, not something I tend to be a part of, but it has an attractive premise. The Smith family visit the
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June’s second batch of paperbacks kicks off with three novels I read and enjoyed last year beginning with Hari Kunzru’s Blue Ruin which opens in 2020 with a renowned British artist and his wife holed up on a wealthy collector’s New York country estate under lockdown. When Jay delivers groceries to a palatial house, he’s
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This first batch of June’s paperbacks has a distinctly Irish flavour beginning with one of my books of last year. Christine Dwyer Hickey writes beautifully crafted thoughtful novels, often from the perspective of women. Our London Lives is set against the backdrop of a vividly evoked London following Milly, eighteen and pregnant when she arrives
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I’ve yet to read anything from this second instalment of June fiction which begins with the one I’m most interested in. Inspired by real events, Heather Clark’s The Scrapbook opens in Harvard in 1996 where Anna meets and falls in love with a German student just before graduation. Visiting Christoph at his home in Germany,
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I’ve read all but two from June’s first batch of new fiction beginning with a novel I snapped up as soon as it appeared on NetGalley. Boogie was only eighteen when their rackety mother left her two daughters with him in Wendy Erksine’s The Benefactors. He raised them both, never distinguishing between Misty and his
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May’s first paperback preview was a bit of a mishmash but this one has a marriage/relationship theme running through it, albeit mostly unhappy, beginning with Sarah Manguso’s Liars, one of my books of last year. It’s the story of a broken marriage told from the perspective of Jane whose relationship with John grows out of
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I’ve read none of the novels from this first batch of May paperbacks which begins with one that’s impressed several bloggers I follow. I wasn’t as enamoured with Charlotte Wood’s The Weekend as many readers but I’ll be trying again with her new one, Stone Yard Devotional, which sees a middle-aged woman seeking peace and
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