Book news, reviews and recommendations
I’ve been reading Susan Cain’s Quiet, and feeling much better about myself. In it Cain posits the idea that the modern world is designed to be lived in and run by extroverts. We’re all made to feel we should be out there bouncing around the world, meeting as many people as we can and having […]
Quiet by Susan Cain: A vindication Read More »
It’s been a little while since I read a novel with a First World War setting. Several popped up here earlier in the year but I think I’ve managed to avoid most of the deluge of books published on it recently. It was the Charles Rennie Mackintosh thread running through Mr Mac and Me rather
Mr Mac and Me by Esther Freud: That’s Charles Rennie Mackintosh to you Read More »
There’s a curiously old-fashioned feel to Sebastian Hampson’s debut. It’s about a naïve gauche young man about to start his art history studies at the Sorbonne and his encounter with an older, sophisticated woman who decides to make something of him. The press release suggests Brief Encounter and there’s certainly a cinematic feel about Hampson’s
The Train to Paris by Sebastian Hampson: More than just a romp Read More »
Much to my surprise there are more enticing books published this November than in October. It’s usually a rather dull month – all the finest jewels in the box put out on display for Christmas already – but some treats have been held back perhaps the most surprising of which is Jane Smiley’s Some Luck,
Books to Look Out for in November 2014 Read More »
I have to confess that my heart sank when this novel thudded onto the doormat. I’d been looking forward to it very much but it weighs in at just over 600 pages which for a first novel, or any novel come to that, is quite an undertaking. It’s just the kind of book that appeals
We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas: A richly textured portrait of a marriage Read More »
This is the second American classic I’ve read in a month; the third if we’re counting discrete works rather than volumes. There must be something in the publishing air. This one’s very different from Nella Larsens’s Quicksand and Passing which explore race and identity in the 1920s in a very personal way. Written in 1959,
A Separate Peace by John Knowles: Hard lessons in life Read More »
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 »