A Life in Books

Do Not Become Alarmed by Maile Meloy: A literary thriller with a social conscience

3 July 2017 / 8 Comments

I was delighted when I spotted Maile Meloy’s name in the publishing schedules. I’d enjoyed her previous novels, even going so far as to read her short stories – this was long before my conversion. Her writing is quite subtle, nuanced explorations of relationships and their dynamics. On closer inspection, it turned out her new […]

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Six Degrees of Separation – from Picnic at Hanging Rock to A Vindication of the Rights of Women #6Degrees

1 July 2017 / 26 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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Broken River by J. Robert Lennon: Literary mashup

30 June 2017 / 9 Comments

I’ve been a fan of J. Robert Lennon’s fiction since reading The Funnies, way back when. I reviewed his last novel, Familiar, in the very early days of this blog and enjoyed it despite its rather messy conclusion. He’s a writer unafraid to take risks, a point that Broken River proves with its mashing together

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The Answers by Catherine Lacey: Love, whatever that Is

28 June 2017 / 12 Comments

Catherine Lacey’s second novel arrived with a press release mentioning Margaret Atwood. I tend to ignore these bits of paper until I’ve finished the book, preferring to read it with an open mind. A few chapters in, however, Atwood’s was the name that popped into my head. Not such a cheeky comparison after all for

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Blasts from the Past: The Long Firm by Jake Arnott (1999)

26 June 2017 / 18 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. Jake Arnott was featured in a documentary on the trials and tribulations of getting your first novel published

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The Chalk Artist by Allegra Goodman: Winning and losing

23 June 2017 / 8 Comments

I remember enjoying Allegra Goodman’s The Cookbook Collector very much when it was published back in 2010 which is partly what attracted me to The Chalk Artist, that and what promised to be an exploration of the all-consuming nature of gaming. I’m not a gamer but I am an obsessive reader and so I can

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Cover image for You Should Have Left by Daniel Kehlmann

You Should Have Left by Daniel Kehlmann (transl. Ross Benjamin): Short but not sweet

21 June 2017 / 23 Comments

I’m a great fan of Daniel Kehlmann’s fiction which is why I was so keen to see his first play, The Mentor, premiered in my home town’s Ustinov Studio a couple of months ago. There I was all agog, tickets at the ready only to be too unwell to attend on the night but I

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Paperbacks to Look Out for in July 2017

19 June 2017 / 11 Comments

We’re deep into summer reading territory with the July publishing schedules, although I doubt that any of my paperback choices would be characterised as classic beach reads in publishers’ terms. Milena Busquet’s This Too Shall Pass is at least set near the sea. Blanca leaves Barcelona for the Spanish coastal town where her late mother

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Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney: Mulling things over

16 June 2017 / 19 Comments

This is one of those novels that’s been gathering a head of steam in my neck of the Twitter woods. Not in an off-putting, shouty, endless-stream-of-gushy-tweets way – just enough to pique my interest. It’s a debut from a young Irish author about two best friends – once lovers – who fall into a friendship

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The Lie of the Land by Amanda Craig: Something nasty in the woodshed…

14 June 2017 / 12 Comments

There’s something irresistible about a state-of-the-nation novel, even if that nation has shifted cataclysmically since the novel was conceived. This isn’t the first book in that vein Amanda Craig has written – I remember enjoying Hearts and Minds which explored the lives of immigrants in London a few years back. Two characters from that novel

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Books to Look Out for in July 2017

12 June 2017 / 23 Comments

July sees publishing well into its summer reading season with far fewer books than usual to tempt me although Nickolas Butler’s The Hearts of Men more than makes up for that. His debut, Shotgun Lovesongs, was a wonderful, heart-tugging piece of writing. As ever, there’s that nagging worry about second novel syndrome but this new

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