Book news, reviews and recommendations
I wasn’t particularly keen on Jami Attenberg’s The Middlesteins so you may wonder why Saint Mazie caught my attention: Mazie was the subject of a short essay by Joseph Mitchell first published in The New Yorker and included in his excellent collection Up in the Old Hotel. Like many of Mitchell’s subjects Mazie’s story is […]
Saint Mazie by Jami Attenberg: ‘Queen of the Bowery’ Read More »
Perhaps it’s because those of us in the privileged developed world are living longer – that and the advent of a new century – but there seems to be a little trend for novels written from the point of view of a centenarian bystander, someone who’s rubbed shoulders with those who’ve shaped our world for
Topping my wish list for this second July selection is Sarah Moss’s Signs for Lost Children billed as the third part of a loosely linked trilogy which began with Night Waking. Bodies of Light, the second instalment, appeared on the Wellcome Trust Book Prize shortlist for its theme of nineteenth century women in medicine. This
Books to Look Out For in July 2015: Part 2 Read More »
This is my first Gerbrand Bakker. I’ve been aware of a good deal of interest and acclaim around his books for a while but somehow hadn’t got around to him. With its title and glorious blue-skied cover promising summer it seemed appropriate to pick up his new novel on one of the several miserably cold,
June by Gerbrand Bakker (transl. David Colmer): Deceptively simple Read More »
There’s always a moment of worry when you’re about to plunge into a book you’ve been looking forward to for some time. I remember Belinda McKeon’s Solace being surrounded by a great deal of pre-publication buzz, lots of well-known names singing its praises one of whom was Colm Tóibin which made me pay more attention
Tender by Belinda McKeon: Enduring love Read More »
Long experience has taught me that a ‘lost’ novel is often best kept that way so I won’t be including Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman here. Surely the entire world and its dog must know about it by now, anyway. Instead I thought I’d take a look at a few less trumpeted titles due
Books to Look Out For in July 2015: Part 1 Read More »
Despite the uncertainty of the weather here in the UK I seem to have veered off into summer reading territory this week with the previous post on The Sunlit Night and now this one. Laura Barnett’s new novel stands out a mile in the publishing schedules as that precious thing: a strong commercial novel, cleverly
The Versions of Us by Laura Barnett: The three faces of Eva and Jim Read More »
I’m a sucker for anything Scandi these days – I blame BBC4 – which is why I was attracted to Rebecca Dinerstein’s idiosyncratic first novel. I wasn’t at all sure about it at first – I thought it might be a little too whimsical and that cover is enough to send me scrabbling for something
The Sunlit Night by Rebecca Dinerstein: An endearing bit of eccentricity Read More »
I’ve been tweeting now for around two years, roughly the same amount of time I’ve been blogging. It has to be said that I’m not a particularly active Twitter member but I was quick to discover the joys of #FridayReads and enthusiastically joined in. For the uninitiated it pretty well does what it says on
FridayReads: Too much marketing? Read More »
For those of us who’ve come to know and love Kent Haruf’s quietly brilliant novels set in the small town of Holt, Colorado, news of a new one is cause for celebration but this time the joy is muted. Haruf died last year and this is his last book. His insightful writing is clean and
Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf: Holt’s last hurrah Read More »
I wasn’t at all sure that I would include a review of Anna North’s new novel here: it’s not that I didn’t enjoy it but it’s published exclusively as an ebook. I’m still wedded to paper, I’m afraid, and it seemed unfair to include a book that I wouldn’t have read if I hadn’t been