Book news, reviews and recommendations
H and I have spent the past week being entertained by the boys at Popham Farm – that’s what the owners call the breeding male alpacas who were munching away in the field just below Lynher Cottage where we were staying. I’m not sure how they managed to keep us occupied for so many hours: […]
A week in the land of cream teas and alpacas plus a few books Read More »
Unusually for me, I came to Amy Bloom’s writing through her short stories. Her first collection, Come to Me, was published when I was still a bookseller and I was interested by Bloom’s background as a psychotherapist, made much of when I was pitched the book. I think she was still practising then. It seemed
Lucky Us by Amy Bloom: Families and how to survive them Read More »
You’ve probably heard about this book by now. Even John Humphries sounded interested in it when he interviewed Anna Freeman on a Saturday edition of the Today programme and he hardly seems a fiction fan – that’s more Jim Naughtie’s territory. The hook is an eighteenth-century female pugilist – not something I think I’ve ever
The Fair Fight by Anna Freeman: Definitely comes up to scratch Read More »
I was talking to a friend recently about the novels we were reading. Hers was We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves which you may know is longlisted for this year’s Man Booker. I knew that there was a twist in it both from Twitter and mentions in the trade press but not having read it
Reviews: To spoil, or not to spoil Read More »
Last week I reviewed Harlem Renaissance writer Nella Larsen’s Quicksand, promising that I’d write about Passing in a separate post. The novellas were written the late 1920s and have recently been reissued in a single volume. Both explore race and identity but while Quicksand is widely considered to be autobiographical there’s no suggestion that Passing
Passing by Nell Larsen: Race, identity and the need to belong Read More »
You may remember Steven Galloway’s name from a few years back when The Cellist of Sarajevo was published. Beautifully written, it’s a poignant novel which offered readers a glimpse of the life under siege that we’d seen playing out surreally on our TV screens only a few years before. It became a massive bestseller, and
The Confabulist by Steven Galloway: A very clever bit of business Read More »
This is going to be a short post, not that there aren’t lots of paperbacks published in October but few of them take my fancy, I’m afraid, which is probably best for my credit card. I’ve already read and reviewed three at length here so I’ll start with those. The first is John Ironmonger’s The
Paperbacks to look out for in October 2014 Read More »
Friendship’s a funny old thing: it can last a life time – I’m often envious when my own friends talk about school friends they’re still close to – or it can be short but intense with a multitudes of variations in between. We talk about relationship breakups but not the breakup of a friendship although
Friendship by Emily Gould: Growing up is hard to do Read More »
Recently published in a single volume, Quicksand and Passing are the only two novels – well novellas, really – written by Harlem Renaissance writer Nella Larsen. They each deserve to be treated separately so I’ll start with Quicksand and save Passing for later. Written in 1928, it’s widely considered to be an autobiographical novel –
Quicksand by Nell Larsen: All too relevant today Read More »
My friend, M, came to tea yesterday and took away her annual haul for the breast cancer fund-raiser she’s involved in. She usually warns me a few months in advance so that I can pull some books of the shelves to donate. I haven’t been as methodical as I usually am, just the odd shelf
A Little Light Weeding: The perennial problem of the over crowded bookshelf Read More »
I don’t think I’ve read a book in which the prologue is at the back before and in case you’re thinking of correcting me – it isn’t an epilogue. Rebecca Makkai’s novel is a backward looking history of Laurelfield which we first enter as a family home, albeit a somewhat dysfunctional family. You may know
The Hundred-year House by Rebecca Makkai: A backward kind of history Read More »