Book news, reviews and recommendations
Jen Beagin’s Pretend I’m Dead comes adorned with a ‘laugh-out-loud’ puff on its jacket, although it was the New Mexico setting that was the attraction for me. It’s about twenty-four-year-old Mona who cleans houses for a living, falls hard for a junkie who disappears then takes herself off to Taos. Not perhaps the most inspiring […]
Pretend I’m Dead by Jen Beagin: Smart, funny and dark Read More »
In his touching Foreword to Girl, Balancing and Other Stories, Helen Dunmore’s son, Patrick Charnley, tells us that she had discussed with him the possibility of a collection of short stories to be published after her death. Charnley mined his mother’s papers and laptop, gathering together thirty-three pieces written in the two decades since Dunmore’s
Girl, Balancing by Helen Dunmore: An unexpected, very welcome treat Read More »
We all love lists, don’t we. They’re irresistible to bookish nosy-parkers like me and once we’ve seen one it’s hard not to start putting together our own version, perhaps first in our own heads but before long committing them to screen beckons. So it was with Paula’s My One-Hundred-Book-Library way back in May, then I
My One-Hundred-Book Library Read More »
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 Tales of the City to The Book of Salt #6Degrees Read More »
I was looking for a novel to get stuck into having just given up one I’d been eagerly anticipating but which proved to be disappointing. Set during the 2011 London heatwave, Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett’s debut, The Tyranny of Lost Things, neatly filled the gap. No one’s warned Harmony about the unearthly shrieks of the elderly
The Tyranny of Lost Things by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett: Communes and how to survive them Read More »
We’d already decided on another central European railway jaunt this year then Eurostar announced its new London to Amsterdam service. The idea of arriving in a city dear to both of us without setting foot on a plane was irresistible so we decided to extend our holiday to include a few days there. John Betjeman
Four Days in Amsterdam, Fourteen Days in Central Europe and Three Books Read More »
Two titles were in tight competition for the top of this short list of July paperbacks, so tight that I’ve decided to take them in alphabetical order. Chloe Benjamin’s The Immortalists is one of those books surrounded by the kind of social media brouhaha that so often promises the world but delivers a pale imitation.
Paperbacks to Look Out for in July 2018 Read More »
Back from my travels (more of which next week) with a look at July’s nicely varied bunch of new titles taking in Native American culture, Indonesian customs and genre-defying Icelandic fiction to name but a few disparate themes. Quite some time ago, having spent several holidays in the Four Corners area of the US, I
Books to Look Out For in July 2018 Read More »
This seems to be the year of the novella for me helped along by Madame Bibi who devoted the whole of last month to the form. Set in a small Irish town, Rebecca O’Connor’s He Is Mine and I Have No Other may be short on pages but it’s devastating in its revelation of tragedy,
He Is Mine and I Have No Other by Rebecca O’Connor: Secrets and Lies Read More »
I wasn’t at all sure that I was going to read Meet Me at the Museum. I thought it might be a little too sentimental for my cynical literary heart but a blow to the head which landed me briefly in A & E and left me with a several stitches, a few staples and
Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson: Never too late to change Read More »
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 in as many hands as I could. The Next Step in the Dance is one of those novels that inexplicably – to me, anyway –
Blasts from the Past: The Next Step in the Dance by Tim Gautreaux (1998) Read More »