Book news, reviews and recommendations
Given my not-so-new-found delight in short stories I was keen to read Janice Galloway’s Jellyfish having enjoyed both her memoirs and The Trick is to Keep Breathing. Galloway prefaces her collection with David Lodge’s assertion that literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children; life’s the other way round. With its […]
Jellyfish by Janice Galloway: A reissue, and some. Read More »
There’s a multitude of books focussing on love of the romantic variety and just as many on love of the familial kind but platonic love not so much. We talk about relationship breakups but not the breakup of a friendship although they can be almost as heart breaking, and for many, friends constitute family. Below
Five Novels I’ve Read About Friendship Read More »
All the books in this second paperback instalment are new to me although, thanks to its Man Booker Prize shortlisting, I’ve heard a lot about Daisy Johnson’s Everything Under. Gretel hasn’t seen her mother for sixteen years when they lived on the canals together speaking the secret language they’d invented. A phone call reunites them bringing
Paperbacks to Look Out for in February 2019: Part Two Read More »
it was the structure of Anne Griffin’s When All is Said that first caught my eye and when I realised she’d been a bookseller with Waterstones it went straight on my list. John Boyne’s name sits proudly on the back of my proof under a glowing puff, another Waterstones alumni. Spanning a single night, most
When All is Said by Anne Griffin: Raising a glass or five Read More »
I rarely read dystopian fiction, mostly because the current state of the world feels grim enough to me, but Tünde Farrand’s Wolf Country comes from Eye Books, the same company who published the impressive An Isolated Incident, which persuaded me to give it a try. Set in 2050, Farrand’s novel explores a world gripped by
Wolf Country by Tünde Farrand: All too plausible Read More »
The looming dank dullness that is February here in the UK has been brightened by the prospect of some paperback goodies, beginning with Jen Beagin’s smart, funny debut, Pretend I’m Dead, one of my books of 2018. Twenty-four-year-old Mona cleans houses for a living and falls hard for a junkie, taking herself off to Taos,
Paperbacks to Look Out for in February 2019: Part One Read More »
Regular readers may have noticed I’ve a weakness for Irish writing. It was that and the premise of Billy O’Callaghan’s My Coney Island Baby that attracted me to it. Two lovers, engaged in a long affair, meet for an afternoon once a month, a welcome interval in their humdrum marriages. Now each is faced with
My Coney Island Baby by Billy O’Callaghan: Love in the afternoon Read More »
The Gunners is built around a structure that rarely fails to attract me: a group of people, once friends as children or young adults, are brought together by an event which affects them all. Weddings and funerals are a favourite trigger for this kind of reunion and in the case of Rebecca Kauffman’s novel it’s
The Gunners by Rebecca Kauffman: The Big Chill reprised Read More »
The second part of February’s preview wanders around all over the place rather as I’d like to be doing at this dank, drear time of the year here in the UK. I’m beginning the tour in Paris in 1929 with Whitney Scharer’s gorgeously jacketed The Age of Light which tells the story of renowned photographer
Books to Look Out for in February 2019: Part Two Read More »
I’ve yet to read The Door, Madga Szabó’s best known novel, and I made the mistake of reading Iza’s Ballad on holiday, failing to give it the quiet attention it needed. Nothing to distract me from Katalin Street, enjoyable or otherwise. First published in 1969, it explores the aftermath of the Second World War through
Katalin Street by Madga Szabó (transl. Len Rix): The past is another country Read More »
I read Delphine de Vigan’s Based on a True Story around this time last year and knew it would be one of my books of the year. I was delighted, then, when I spotted Loyalties on the publishing horizon. It tells the story of a young boy, caught up in the fallout from a bitter
Loyalties by Delphine de Vigan (transl. George Miller): Silence is not always golden Read More »