A Life in Books

Cover image for Friedrichstrasse 19 by Emma Harding

Friedrichstrasse 19 by Emma Harding: ‘You will endure. What else can we do?’

18 February 2022 / 21 Comments

Telling a city’s story through a single building and its inhabitants is such an appealing device. Żanna Słoniowska did it memorably with Lviv in The House with the Stained-glass Window. Emma Harding’s Friedrichstrasse 19 takes a similar tack with the added lure of exploring the history of Berlin, always a favourite setting, through the lives […]

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Cover image for The Colony by Audrey Magee

The Colony by Audrey Magee: Two sides of the story

16 February 2022 / 11 Comments

This is the second novel I’ve reviewed this year with a backdrop of The Troubles. Set in the 1979 on a tiny remote Irish island rather than in a 1993 Ulster village, Audrey Magee’s The Colony is very different from Jan Carson’s The Raptures. Two men make their way to the island, planning to spend

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Cover image for Booth by Karen Joy Fowler

Books to Look Out for in March 2022: Part Two

14 February 2022 / 24 Comments

There was a definite family theme running through much of the first part of March’s fiction preview; this second part is more of a mixed bag although it does start with a novel about a family, and an infamous one at that. As I say all too often on here, then promptly read the exception

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Cover image for Love, If That's What it is by Marjke Schermer

Love, If That’s What It Is by Marijke Schermer (transl. Hester Velmans): One size does not fit all

11 February 2022 / 12 Comments

I’m a sucker for novels about long term relationships, the complicated kind rather than the reasonably straightforward happy ones although they, too, have their turbulent moments. Marijke Schermer’s Love, If That’s What It Is looked right up that particular alley with its story of the breakdown of Terri and David’s 25-year marriage, told from the

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Cover image for Brown Girls by Daphne Palasi Andreades

Brown Girls by Daphne Palasi Andreades: Growing up brown in Queens

9 February 2022 / 22 Comments

I’m a big fan of debuts, always hoping to read something by an author whose career I can settle into and enjoy. It doesn’t always pay off but sometimes I come across one that I have to keep reminding myself is a first novel such is the assurance and accomplishment of the writing. Daphne Palasi

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Cover image for The Exhibitionist by Charlotte Mendelson

Books to Look Out for in March 2022: Part One

7 February 2022 / 37 Comments

Things are looking up in my part of the world with spring on the, albeit distant, horizon and some great new fiction on offer in March beginning with Charlotte Mendelson’s The Exhibitionist, seven years in the writing according to the letter that accompanied my proof. Artists Ray and Lucia Hanrahan have been together for decades.

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Six Degrees of Separation – No One is Talking About This to Piranesi

5 February 2022 / 40 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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Devotion by Hannah Kent: ‘My life was only ever a hand’s breadth’

4 February 2022 / 14 Comments

It’s seems an age since I reviewed Hannah Kent’s debut, Burial Rites. For a long time, it was one of my most visited posts and I’ve never been able to work out why. Despite enjoying it, I didn’t get around to The Good People but enthusiastically accepted when I was offered Devotion. Both her previous

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Cover image for The Second Cut by Louise Welsh

The Second Cut by Louise Welsh: Rilke’s return

2 February 2022 / 14 Comments

I was the reviews editor at Waterstone’s Books Quarterly when Louise Welsh’s The Cutting Room was published 20 years ago. I wasn’t particularly inclined to read it, not being a crime fiction fan, but of course needed to for work and what a treat I’d have missed if I hadn’t. The star of the show

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Cover image for Peterdown by David Anand

Paperbacks to Look Out for in February 2022: Part Two

31 January 2022 / 21 Comments

Part two of February’s paperback preview is something of a mixed bag, albeit an interesting one, beginning with. David Annand’s Peterdown which tells the story of a town through two people on opposing sides of a plan to redevelop it. Ellie is an architect determined to save a modernist estate shortlisted as a property to

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Cover image for Tell Me How to Be by Neel Patel

Tell Me How to Be by Neel Patel: ‘The things we most desire are not always what we need’

28 January 2022 / 14 Comments

I put up my hand for Neel Patel’s Tell Me How to Be in response to the heartfelt, very personal enthusiasm of its editor. There’s such a difference between that and the hype that so often puts me off. Patel’s debut brings together a mother and her two sons one year after the sudden death

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