Book news, reviews and recommendations
There’s an abundance of paperback treats coming up this September, so many that I’ve split them into two posts. Top of my list is Jake Arnott’s rollicking tale of thieves and whores, The Fatal Tree, set in 1726. Told to us by Billy, a confessional writer with his own story, it’s about Edgeworth Bess, banged […]
Paperbacks to Look Out for in September 2017: Part One Read More »
I remember reading Jens Christian Grøndahl’s Lucca when it was published in the UK in 2003, too long ago to recall the detail of its story but an impression of quietly elegant prose stuck which is what attracted me to Often I Am Happy. Its premise is also an intriguing one: recently widowed, Ellinor stands
Back in 2001, I was very taken with a novel called Pages for You. It was a love story, telling of the intense almost visceral affair between seventeen-year-old Flannery and her teacher Anne, ten years her lover’s senior. Since then I’ve read and thoroughly enjoyed Sylvia Brownrigg’s The Delivery Room, a very different novel. When
Pages for Her by Sylvia Brownrigg: Flannery and Anne reprised Read More »
September’s preview starts with Jenny Erpenbeck’s Go Went Gone, a book I’ve been hoping to see in translation since MarinaSofia over at Finding Time to Write mentioned it earlier in the year. In it Erpenbeck explores the opening of Germany’s borders to refugees and the effects of their arrival on German society through Richard, an
Books to Look Out for in September 2017 Read More »
I have to confess that these are the first short stories I’ve read by Tove Jansson although I’ve very much enjoyed her novellas, given a new lease of lease of life by the lovely Sort of Books. I’ve harboured a fondness for them since their publicist sent me a copy of The Moomins and the
Letters from Klara by Tove Jansson (transl. Thomas Teal): Short stories to delight in Read More »
It was clear even before I opened Fiona Melrose’s new novel that it was going to be an homage to Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway: it follows a set of disparate characters through a single day as one of them prepares for a party on December 6th, 2013. Just as Woolf’s novel reflected the preoccupations of
Johannesburg by Fiona Melrose: Mrs Dalloway goes to South Africa 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. Way back in my bookselling days I remember being given a proof of Elizabeth Hay’s Garbo Laughs. It
Blasts from the Past: Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay (2007) 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 Pride and Prejudice to Under the Visible Life #6Degrees Read More »
I’m not an avid thriller reader as regular visitors here will know but last year one did find its way onto my books of the year list – Annemarie Neary’s Siren, notable for its sharp, pithy writing and smart psychological insights. Her new novel opens in Goa, a world away from Siren’s Northern Irish setting,
The Orphans by Annemarie Neary: The kids are not alright Read More »
Regular readers of this blog will probably know that I’ll take any opportunity to bang on about Nickolas Butler’s debut Shotgun Lovesongs. I even managed to get it into my first Six Degrees of Separation post. No surprise, then, that The Hearts of Men was one of the books I was looking forward to most
The Hearts of Men by Nickolas Butler: What maketh the man? Read More »
This second batch of August paperbacks kicks off in New York with a surefire bestseller then wanders into smalltown America before briefly taking off around the world, offering a few more out-of-the-way books to explore. Emma Flint’s Little Deaths takes a crime committed in 1960s New York and fashions it into a novel which I’m
Paperbacks to Look Out for in August 2017: Part Two Read More »