Book news, reviews and recommendations
I’ve read some sad books this year – I Refuse and Academy Street spring to mind – but none as sad as Suzanne McCourt’s The Lost Child set in small town Australia. At one stage I thought I might have to give it up but her writing is so impressive that I decided to tough […]
The Lost Child by Suzanne McCourt: Best read when cheerful Read More »
After Jenny Erpenbeck’s intricately constructed The End of Days I felt the need for some good old-fashioned straightforward storytelling and Celeste Ng’s debut seemed to fit the bill. Set in 1977, it’s the story of a family whose oldest daughter disappears one night. A few days later the police arrive with the awful news that
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng: A perfectly named debut Read More »
Back at the beginning of the year I wrote a post about #readwomen2014 which had caught my eye on Twitter. It was set up in an attempt to redress the lamentable imbalance between the coverage of books written by women as opposed to books written by men. As both an ex-reviews editor and a woman
#ReadWomen2014: Redux Read More »
I suspect The End of Days is a bit of a Marmite novel: you’ll either marvel at the way Jenny Erpenbeck deftly handles the constant shifts in narrative throughout this complex novel or you’ll despair of ever keeping track. Just as Jane Smiley sets out to tell the story of an American century through the
I’ve been meaning to read Thomas E. Kennedy’s Copenhagen Quartet for some time and was sent a copy of the final instalment recently. This might seem an odd place to start a series but I’d been assured that all the novels stand alone, as indeed this one did although I am left wondering if I’ve
Beneath the Neon Egg by Thomas E. Kennedy: A Scandi novel written by an American Read More »
I know you’ve all get your minds on Christmas but I thought it might be time for a little taster of what 2015 has to offer before we get overdosed on carols and all that malarkey. It’s a good month, too. No huge names leap out for me but there are several interesting looking treats
Books to Look Out for in January 2015 Read More »
The last of my ‘books of the year’ posts begins with one of my two September favourites, Steven Galloway’s The Confabulist which tells the story of the man who killed Houdini not once, but twice. Far from a straightforward reimagining of the Houdini story Galloway’s novel is a very clever bit of business which didn’t
Books of the Year 2014: Part 3 Read More »
Looking back over the year for these three posts it seems that many of my favourite reads were crammed into the first two months of the year. March, however, saw only one, Shot gun Lovesongs, but that may well turn out to be my book of the year. Nickolas Butler’s American smalltown gem is a
Books of the Year 2014: Part 2 Read More »
It’s that time of the year again – best of this and that all over the place. When I did this last year I’d only been blogging for a few months and, foolishly, thought I’d restrict myself to a top six. It didn’t work and the so-called six spilled over into just under twenty so
Books of the Year 2014: Part 1 Read More »
A little while ago Kathryn Simmonds contacted me asking if I’d consider reviewing her novel. It’s published by Seren, a small publisher and I always have a soft spot for them, and it seemed interesting so I agreed to have a look at it. It was the Greenham Common theme that hooked me. I’ve never
Love and Fallout by Kathryn Simmonds: Easy reading for Guardianistas Read More »
Not so long ago I had a run of heart-wrenching reads so it’s a pleasure to report that Anna Quindlen’s Still Life with Breadcrumbs is in the opposite corner. Not that there were any guarantees that it would be – I remember two of her previous books, Black and Blue and One True Thing, being
Still Life with Breadcrumbs by Anna Quindlen: A touch of the Anne Tylers Read More »