A Life in Books

Cover image for Elegy, Southwest by Madeleine Watts

Elegy, Southwest by Madeleine Watts: ‘Our time, perhaps, is shorter than we think’

14 March 2025 / 20 Comments

I spotted Madeleine Watts’s Elegy, Southwest on social media thanks to a passionately enthusiastic post from its editor. The premise of a road novel set in the desert of the American Southwest, a landscape which I’ve visited several times and loved, made me put up my hand immediately. Watts’s novel follows Eloise and Lewis over

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Cover image for Your Absence is darkness by Jón Kalman Stefánsson

A Snapshot of My Reading #2

12 March 2025 / 25 Comments

I posted the first snapshot of my reading on New Year’s Day, expecting to follow it with another in February which somehow didn’t come off thanks to my gallivanting to London and Stockholm. This month I’m staying put with enough time on my hands to post the second. The novel I’m reading is Your Absence

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Cover image for Open, Heaven by Seán Hewitt

Books to Look Out For in April 2025: Part Two

10 March 2025 / 19 Comments

There’s a coming-of-age theme running through the first few titles in April’s second fiction preview beginning with Seán Hewitt’s Open, Heaven which sees a deep bond form between two teenage boys. James is eager to begin his life away from the expectations of his family and the small village in which he lives. Luke has

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Cover image for This Is a Love Story by Jessica Soffer

This is a Love Story by Jessica Soffer: ‘Don’t go’

7 March 2025 / 18 Comments

Jessica Soffer’s This Is a Love Story is an exploration of a long marriage between an artist and a writer, played out against a New York City background. Knowing that she’s dying, Jane tells Abe she wants to remember their many decades together, the good times and the bad, many spent in their brownstone apartment

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Cover image for The Woman in Blue by Douglas Bruton

Woman in Blue by Douglas Bruton: ‘He loves me, he loves me not’

5 March 2025 / 35 Comments

Douglas Bruton’s With or Without Angels and Hope Never Knew Horizon both made it on to my books of the year list. He writes about art, creativity and love in an original, engagingly imaginative way. Even before reading Woman in Blue I was pretty sure it would be landing alongside this year’s favourites. As many

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Cover image for On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle

Books to Look Out For in April 2025: Part One

3 March 2025 / 26 Comments

I’ve read two books from the first April preview instalment beginning with Solvej Balle’s International Booker Prize longlisted On The Calculation of Volume which is structured as a diary written by Tara, briefly in Paris for the antiquarian bookshop she runs with her husband. Nothing seems amiss until the following day begins to repeat itself.

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Six Degrees of Separation – Prophet Song to The Easy Way Out

1 March 2025 / 27 Comments

Six Degrees of Separation is a meme hosted by Kate over at Books Are My Favourite and Best. It works like this: each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six others to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the titles on the list,

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Cover image for The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber

Blasts from the Past: The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber (2002)

28 February 2025 / 26 Comments

This is the latest in a series of occasional posts featuring books I read years ago about which I was wildly enthusiastic at the time, wanting to press a copy in as many hands as I could. I might well not have read Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White which weighs in at

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My Women’s Prize for Fiction 2025 Wish List

26 February 2025 / 34 Comments

It’s almost longlist time for the Women’s Prize for Fiction which will be celebrating its thirtieth year this time around. Tuesday March 4th is the date to add your diary. Only novels written by women in English published between April 1st 2024 and March 31st 2025 qualify. I’ve followed the same format as previous years,

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Paperbacks to Look Out For in March 2025: Part Two

24 February 2025 / 20 Comments

I’ve read just one from the second instalment of March paperbacks. Lisa Ko’s Memory Piece follows three American women of Chinese heritage who first meet in 1983, aged twelve, and maintain a connection into their seventies in a dystopian near future. Each of the friends has a lengthy narrative section charting the very different directions

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Cover image for The Cafe with No Name by Robert Seethaler

The Café with No Name by Robert Seethaler (transl. Katy Derbyshire): Everyday life writ large

21 February 2025 / 24 Comments

This is the fourth novel by Robert Seethaler I’ve reviewed on here. The first was A Whole Life which sees a man lead a simple yet rich life, leaving his alpine valley just once. After that I snapped up both The Tobacconist and The Field as soon as they appeared. All offer a slice of

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