Book news, reviews and recommendations
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 […]
This is the latest in a series of occasional posts featuring books I read years ago about which I was wildly enthusiastic at the time, wanting to press a copy into as many hands as I could. Lost in Translation is my first non-fiction blast from the past. It was published in the UK shortly
Blasts from the Past: Lost in Translation by Eva Hoffman (1989) Read More »
Regular visitors to this blog will know that I tend not to review historical novels. There are exceptions, of course – Jake Arnott’s The Fatal Tree and Andrew Miller’s Now We Shall be Entirely Free spring to mind – but generally my feet are planted firmly in the twenty-first century. You might be surprised then
First published in 1962 at the height of the Civil Rights movement, William Melvin Kelley’s A Different Drummer was championed earlier this year by the New Yorker who dubbed Kelley a ‘lost giant of American literature’. His novel is set in 1957 in an unnamed Southern state where the descendent of a slave performs an
A Different Drummer by William Melvin Kelley: Sadly pertinent Read More »
The shortlist for the Sunday Times / Peters Fraser + Dunlop Young Writer Of The Year Award, in association with The University of Warwick was announced yesterday and I’m relieved to tell you that I’m looking forward to reading all four books. I hope my fellow shadow judges are equally pleased. The titles are: Kings of
Six Degrees of Separation is a meme hosted by Kate over at Books Are My Favourite and Best. It works like this: each month, a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the others on the
Six Degrees of Separation – from Vanity Fair to The Mountain Can Wait #6Degrees Read More »
I owe my short story conversion largely to Lucia Berlin’s A Manual for Cleaning Women. There’d been others along the way but it was Berlin’s collection that sealed the deal. Given that she died in 2004, I’d assumed that was it and so was delighted when Evening in Paradise turned up. Comprising twenty-two stories, this
Evening in Paradise by Lucia Berlin: An unexpected treat Read More »
I don’t think I’ve posted twice in one day before but today’s the day the Young Writer of the Year shadow judging panel is announced and I’m on it. Past winners of the award have included Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends and Grief is a Thing with Feathers while both Sara Taylor’s The Lauras and The
A new Georgina Harding is always something to celebrate for me. I’m a great fan of her elegant yet lyrical writing and her quiet perceptiveness. Her last novel, The Gun Room, explored the legacy of war through a photographer and the unwelcome fame endured by one of his subjects. Land of the Living revisits the
Land of the Living by Georgina Harding: War and its aftermath reprised Read More »
Just a handful of paperbacks for November, none of which I’ve read although I did toy with Laurie Canciani’s The Insomnia Museum before taking off on holiday earlier in the year then somehow never got around to reading it. It’s about seventeen-year-old Anna who has spent the last twelve years building the titular museum with
Paperbacks to Look Out for in November 2018 Read More »
If there’s a pattern running through this year’s reading for me it’s the power of the novella. Ghost Wall, Four Soldiers, El Hacho and Soviet Milk all spring to mind, each of them dealing with weighty subjects often in spare, careful prose, and there are many more I could mention. Sulaiman Addonia’s beautifully expressed Silence
Silence is My Mother Tongue by Sulaiman Addonia: The quiet power of the novella Read More »