A Life in Books

Dance by the Canal by Kerstin Hensel (transl. Jen Calleja): Down but not out

20 September 2017 / 12 Comments

Peirene’s novellas come with a brief foreword from Meike Ziervogel, a short personal comment explaining why this particular book caught her eye. The one prefacing Kerstin Hensel’s Dance by the Canal ends ‘This book will make you think’. I’ve yet to read anything published by Peirene which hasn’t done that. Hensel’s book is the story […]

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Paperbacks to Look Out for in October 2017

18 September 2017 / 16 Comments

There’s a nicely varied bunch of paperbacks in the offing for October. I’ll start off with a book that’s been popular in my neck of the Twitter woods for quite some months. ‘What if I don’t want to hold your baby? – Can I date you without ever hearing about your divorce? – What can

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The Wardrobe Mistress by Patrick McGrath: A well turned out chiller

13 September 2017 / 15 Comments

I’ve enjoyed several of Patrick McGrath’s novels, some of them with a distinctly Gothic flavour. Those of you who’ve read Asylum will know what I mean. For some reason, I’d got it into my head that The Wardrobe Mistress inhabited similar territory which turns out to be not entirely the case. Set against the background

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Books to Look Out for in October 2017

11 September 2017 / 28 Comments

There are three titles competing for top of my October wish list. Hard to choose which to grab first so I’m plumping for the one I’ve been waiting for the longest: Jane Harris’ Sugar Money. It’s been eight years since Gillespie and I was published, a novel which features a superbly unreliable narrator, and eleven

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My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent: Not for the faint-hearted

8 September 2017 / 20 Comments

If you spend any time in the literary corners of Twitter you will have heard of Gabriel Tallent’s debut already. Lots of readers fervently singing its praises at every turn. I knew from the blurb that it would be a tough read but had no conception of just how gut-wrenchingly nerve-wracking. I nearly gave it

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Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie: Antigone redux

6 September 2017 / 17 Comments

It’s been three years since Kamila Shamsie’s last novel, A God in Every Stone, a book I confidently expected to appear on the following year’s Baileys longlist. This year’s Man Booker judges have followed suit, longlisting Home Fire which I’m sure would have appeared on my own wishlist had I read it in time. It’s

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Blasts from the Past: The People’s Act of Love by James Meek (2005)

4 September 2017 / 12 Comments

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. The People’s Act of Love is one of those rare things: a novel that came to me via

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Six Degrees of Separation – from Wild Swans to The Invisible Woman #6Degrees

2 September 2017 / 10 Comments

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

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Forest Dark by Nicole Krauss: Lost in the desert with Kafka

1 September 2017 / 6 Comments

You probably know Nicole Krauss’ name already. The History of Love, published back in 2004, was a bestseller here in the UK as well as in her native US, thanks in part to its inclusion in the Richard & Judy book club selection. Lots of literary types tended to sneer at R&J but their choices

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The Hidden Keys by André Alexis: A hugely enjoyable, sophisticated caper

30 August 2017 / 13 Comments

This is the first book I’ve read by André Alexis. His last novel was narrated in the voices of its titular dogs which brought back memories of Paul Auster’s Timbuktu, and not happy ones. That said Fifteen Dogs went on to win the Scotiabank Giller prize in 2015 so what do I know? This latest

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Cover image for Bright Precious Days by Jay McInerney

Paperbacks to Look Out for in September 2017: Part Two

28 August 2017 / 13 Comments

This second instalment of September paperbacks starts with a book that I wanted to love but couldn’t quite manage to. If you’re a fan of Jay McInerney’s series of novels which began with Brightness Falls you won’t need to be told who the Calloways are nor will you need to have explained to you why

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