Book news, reviews and recommendations
March’s second paperback preview begins with one from an author I’ve long admired, now a Nobel Prize winner. Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Theft is a tale of family and obligation set in postcolonial Zanzibar, now a tourist destination thanks to its beautiful archipelago. When his mother and stepfather take young Badar into their home, Karim is puzzled […]
Paperbacks to Look Out For in March 2026: Part Two Read More »
February’s snapshot includes a novel I’m crossing my fingers for, a short story collection from a favourite author and a well-known critic’s very personal piece art history. The novel I’m reading is Rupert Thomson’s How to Make a Bomb which begins with an academic returning from a conference, experiencing what may be a breakdown. I’ve
A Snapshot of My Reading #12 Read More »
H and I had been toying with going to Oslo or Helsinki for this year’s chilly break but decided to plump for Copenhagen instead which we’d visited twice before in February and enjoyed. A lucky choice as temperatures sank to -10 C in Helsinki last week. I had my eye on the Design Museum for
Four Days in Copenhagen and One Book Read More »
Back from Copenhagen (more of which later in the week) with March’s first paperback preview which begins with two favourites from last year: one a novella, the other a chunkster. I was so impressed with Anthony Shapland’s use of language in A Room Above a Shop, I assumed he was a poet but he turns
Paperbacks to Look Out For in March 2026: Part One Read More »
Several Irish authors in this second instalment of March’s preview, including one of my favourites, but I’m kicking off with a writer I’ve not read for a while. I enjoyed John Lanchester’s Capital, soapy though it was which is perhaps why it made such good TV. Look What You Made Me Do is set in
Books to Look Out For in March 2026: Part Two Read More »
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,
Six Degrees of Separation – Flashlight to Dreamland Read More »
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. Susan Minot’s prose is characterised by the kind of quietly restrained precision which has long been my favourite
Blasts from the Past: Evening by Susan Minot (1999) Read More »
I went back and forth on whether to read Madeline Cash’s Lost Lambs, partly the cover, partly the emphasis on humour, but I read a few reviews one of which emphatically told ditherers like me to get on with it. Cash’s novel follows the supremely dysfunctional Flynn family shortly after Catherine, frustrated with her life
Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash: An enjoyable romp Read More »
We’re on the home strait, heading towards spring here in the UK with some interesting fiction to ease us along although I wasn’t entirely sold on March’s first title. Quite a lot of pre-publication brouhaha around Eliana Ramage’s ambitious debut, To the Moon and Back, which follows Steph who arrives with her sister in Oklahoma
Books to Look Out For in March 2026: Part One Read More »
I was looking for something reasonably untaxing when Erin Somers’s novel popped up on NetGalley. Set in gentrified smalltown America, The Ten Year Affair follows Cora, Sam and their families through a decade after they meet and instantly click at a baby group. She thought Eliot and Sam would get along. She could picture their
The Ten Year Affair by Erin Somers: Will they won’t they? Read More »
I remember lots of brouhaha around Australian writer Madeleine Gray’s debut, Green Dot, but its premise didn’t appeal to me. Chosen Family looked much more interesting. It follows two friends, misfits at their all-girls school, who become platonic, cooperative parents of a daughter, determined to be better at the job than their own parents despite
Chosen Family by Madeleine Gray: You always hurt the one you love Read More »