Book news, reviews and recommendations
That subtitle isn’t a quote from Sebastian Barry’s new novel – as some of you may have spotted, it’s the opening line from Ford Maddox Ford’s The Good Soldier – but it’s the phrase that came into my head many times while reading it. Set in mid-1990s Ireland, Old God’s Time follows a recently retired
Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry: ‘This is the saddest story I have ever heard’ Read More »
I would have been keen to read Nicole Flattery’s first novel anyway, having enjoyed her excellent short story collection, Show Them a Good Time, but its premise is intriguing. In 1967, two young high school students helped transcribe tapes of conversations and monologues made by Andy Warhol’s coterie on which he based A Novel. Flattery’s
Nothing Special by Nicole Flattery: ‘I could become someone of my own invention’ Read More »
This first instalment of April goodies includes several I’ve already read, one of which had me remembering my old bookselling days. I’m starting with the new one from an author whose novels I would’ve been happily recommending to all and sundry had they been published back then. I’d enjoyed both Harmless Like You and Starling
Books to Look Out For in April 2023: Part One 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 – Passages to Life a User’s Manual 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 into as many hands as I could. Friends are the new family has become something of a contemporary cliché. Perhaps its origins lie in the
Blasts from the Past: A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham (1990) Read More »
Every year I post two literary prize wishlists in the sure fire knowledge that few if any of those wishes will be fulfilled. That said, they’re fun to do and I always like to see what other readers would like the judges to plump for. The Women’s Prize for Fiction is the one I care
My Women’s Prize for Fiction 2023 Wishlist Read More »
The second batch of March’s paperbacks kicks off with one that demands a bit of concentration. Jennifer Egan’s The Candy House explores the fallout from a technology that captures our very consciousness through a series of narratives connected by characters all linked to Bix Boulton, the software’s creator. No brief synopsis comes close to encapsulating
Paperbacks to Look Out For in March 2023: Part Two Read More »
I’ve yet to get around to reading Rebecca Makkai’s last novel, The Great Believers, but I enjoyed both The Borrower and The Hundred-Year House so put up my hand for a copy of her new novel. I Have Some Questions for You follows Bodie who never felt she fit in at Granby, the boarding school
Door-stopping chunksters often fit the bill if you’re in the mood for a good old-fashioned bit of storytelling but if it’s a succinct, finely-honed literary punch you’re after, it’s hard to beat a novella. This is my fourth Five Novels I’ve Read post devoted to novellas which gives you some idea of how much I
Five Novellas in Translation I’ve Read Read More »
March means spring’s on the horizon in my part of the world with the worst over for another year. Lots to look forward to in the book world, too, beginning with Rebecca Wait’s debut I’m Sorry You Feel That Way which has kept its cover sporting last year’s favourite image of a woman face down
Paperbacks to Look Out For in March 2023: Part One Read More »
I was intrigued by the blurb for Douglas Bruton’s brief novella, With or Without Angels, which described the book as ‘a response through fiction’ to ‘The New World’ an artwork by the late artist Alan Smith, itself a response to the eighteenth-century artist Giandomenico Tiepolo’s ‘Il Mondo Nuovo’. In his acknowledgements, Bruton explains that after
With or Without Angels by Dennis Bruton: A beautiful and original response to art Read More »