Book news, reviews and recommendations
Whereas there was no contest for my first June selection’s lead title, two novels jostle for that position in the second. Tim Winton wins by a whisker with The Shepherd’s Hut. Jaxie Clackton has long since put home behind him when a dramatic event leaves him with nothing, catapulting him into a journey across the […]
Books to Look Out for in June 2018: Part Two Read More »
I’d heard nothing about An American Marriage before it arrived, its cover adorned with an Oprah’s Book Club selection tag which always reminds me of Jonathan Franzen’s pompous refusal to have anything to do with Winfrey’s endorsement of The Corrections, considering himself to be part of the ‘high art literary tradition‘. Well, la di da.
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones: Love in the balance Read More »
I’ve yet to read anything by Amy Bloom that I’ve not loved. Her writing is both deft and empathetic, pressing all my literary buttons. Hopes were extraordinarily high, then, for White Houses but they were surpassed to the extent that this post is in danger of degenerating into one long gush. Spanning a weekend in
White Houses by Amy Bloom: An American love story Read More »
It’s often tricky to decide which title should lead these previews but not this time. Written when she knew her death was imminent, Helen Dunmore’s gorgeously jacketed short story collection Girl Balancing, and Other Stories explores family ties, motherhood friendship and grief. ‘Capturing the passion, joy, loss, longing and loneliness we encounter as we navigate
Books to Look Out for in June 2018: Part One 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 The Poisonwood Bible to The Eyre Affair #6Degrees Read More »
The slightly gushy letter that prefaces Meg Fee’s book of essays (at least in my proof copy) made me wonder if it would be for me but its premise – a young woman finding her way in New York City, always a lure – made me press on. Fee’s short pieces cover thirteen years, a
Places I Stopped on the Way Home by Meg Fee: Growing pains in New York Read More »
I seem to have read more novellas than usual this year. Not entirely a conscious decision – I love that feeling of sinking into a doorstopper, particularly in winter – but several of the shorter novels I’ve reviewed have packed much more of a punch than a luxuriously fat, piece of storytelling often does. Nicolai
This meme was the brainchild of Fictionophile although I spotted it at Lisa’s ANZ Litlovers blog and was very taken with it. I’ve a feeling mine was much quicker to put together than Lisa’s as she has over 1,000 books in her TBR which has made me feel so much better about my own. Thank
My Blog’s Name in Books Read More »
I’ve read just one of this second selection of May paperbacks – Dorthe Nors’ Mirror, Shoulder, Signal which picked up a bit of attention when it was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize. It sees fortysomething Sonja attempting to learn to drive, something she feels she really should have done some time ago,
Paperbacks to Look Out for in May 2018: Part Two Read More »
Each and every one of the short stories in Michael Andreasen’s The Sea Beast Takes a Lover is a work of surreal, off-the-wall fantasy, about as far from my usual literary purview as you can get yet they had me transfixed, wondering what kind of wacky journey Andreasen was going to take me on next.
The Sea Beast Takes a Lover by Michael Andreasen: A strange and wonderful collection Read More »
Impossible not to comment on that title which makes the old bookseller in me wonder just how much it will be mangled in customer enquiries. I’m sure the publishers breathed a sigh of relief that Twitter have extended their 140-character limit, too. That said, it was the title which attracted me to this novella along