Book news, reviews and recommendations
The Seed Collectors is Scarlett Thomas’s first novel for quite some time. Her idiosyncratic books, several of which flirt with science fiction, seem to attract a passionate following. I’d read only two before this one: The End of Mr Y, about a PhD student’s encounter with a rare edition of a nineteenth-century writer’s book, wandered
The Seed Collectors by Scarlett Thomas: Bursting with ideas Read More »
Last month, in response to the brouhaha about E L James’ sequel to Fifty Shades of Grey, Sophie Rochester, Director of the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize, came up with a neat riposte: the Twitter hashtag #BritishwritingisnotallGrey. I’d missed it but Naomi at The Writes of Women wrote a post celebrating it with an excellent list
British Writing is not all Grey Read More »
Jo McMillan’s debut has an unusual subject for what is essentially a commercial novel: life in the 1980s German Democratic Republic as seen through the eyes of Tamworth’s only deeply committed Communist and her teenage daughter. That alone would have been enough to catch my eye but two trips to Berlin, where commemoration of the
Motherland by Jo McMillan: From Tamworth to Berlin with love Read More »
I thoroughly enjoyed My Salinger Year, Joanna Rakoff’s memoir of her time as a literary agent’s assistant, and was pleased to hear that her novel was to be published in the UK. It’s been available in the States for a few years although its reception seems to have been somewhat mixed. I’d also heard that
A Fortunate Age by Joanna Rakoff: A enjoyable literary soap opera Read More »
I’ve read all but two of July’s selection of paperbacks and reviewed four of them which makes this an easy post for me. I’ll start with one I haven’t read but have been eagerly anticipating: Haruki Murakami’s Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage and before you castigate me for that missing ‘u’, that’s
Paperbacks to Look Out For in July 2015 Read More »
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 »