A Life in Books

Cover image for Lightbreakers by Aja Gabel

Lightbreakers by Aja Gabel: ’A story of impossible things made possible’

21 November 2025 / 10 Comments

I wasn’t sure about reading Aja Gabel’s Lightbreakers: the premise was attractive, but the blurb suggested elements of SF/Fantasy that I might have trouble with, more my understanding than anything else. It follows Noah who’s been invited to take part in what is essentially a time travel experiment funded by a billionaire, and his wife, […]

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Cover image for Bad Bad Girl by Gish Jen

Bad Bad Girl by Gish Jen: A novel with some truth in it

19 November 2025 / 12 Comments

Despite her extensive back catalogue which includes five works of fiction, I’d never read anything by Gish Jen. Her new, difficult-to-categorise book, Bad Bad Girl, is the story of her mother’s life in which Jen imagines conversations, seeking answers to questions her mother would never give. It’s a novelisation, leaning very much towards memoir but,

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Cover image for Buddha Da by Anne Donovan

Five Scottish Novels I’ve Read

17 November 2025 / 28 Comments

Having written a couple of these posts on Irish fiction, it’s time for a few Scottish favourites, some written in such rich dialect I could hear it as I read. There’s a real skill to that kind of writing as anyone who’s read a cringe-makingly poor version of it will know. Here then are five

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Cover image for Anika Jade Levy's Flat Earth

Flat Earth by Anika Jade Levy: A bleakly funny novella

14 November 2025 / 17 Comments

The blurb for Anika Jade Levy’s Flat Earth suggested an interesting contrast between two friends who meet at a liberal arts college – one looks set for success, the other adrift and unable to make anything stick. Set against the backdrop of the New York art world, Levy’s debut opens with Avery and Frances driving

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Cover image for Run Me to Earth by Paul Yoon

A Snapshot of My Reading #9

12 November 2025 / 30 Comments

This month’s snapshot includes a novel by a Korean American author, a short story collection from a promising young Irish writer and a doorstopping travelogue. The novel I’m reading is Paul Yoon’s Run Me to Earth, chosen because I so enjoyed his short story collection. It follows three young Laotians, recruited to help at a

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Cover image for Holy Smoke by Fanny Howe

Books to Look Out For in December 2025

10 November 2025 / 23 Comments

December’s always a thin month for new titles but a few from indies look worth exploring, all but one with a political flavour. Originally published in 1979 and now appearing posthumously for the first time in the UK, Fanny Howe’s Holy Smoke comes billed as ‘an account of the frenzy and paranoia of US politics

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Cover image for The Silver Book by Olivia Laing

The Silver Book by Olivia Laing: ‘We are all in danger’

7 November 2025 / 17 Comments

I was hesitant about Olivia Laing’s The Silver Book when it was pitched to me. I’d been impressed by The Lonely City and The Trip to Echo Spring but writers who excel at non-fiction sometimes lard their novels with too much research. Its premise, though, is such an interesting one I accepted. Set during in

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Cover image for The Wax Child by Olga Ravn

The Wax Child by Olga Ravn (transl. Martin Aitken): ‘I am not a child, only something that looks like one’

5 November 2025 / 15 Comments

Set in seventeenth-century Denmark, Olga Ravn’s The Wax Child grew out of HEX, her play which premiered at the Royal Danish Theatre in 2023. It’s narrated by the titular wax child moulded by Christenze Kruckow, an impoverished noblewoman charged with witchcraft. Is that what harmful magic is? The thing everyone did to stop the hiccups?

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Cover image for Now We Shall Be Entirely Free by Andrew Miller

Another Five Doorstopping Novels I’ve Read

3 November 2025 / 35 Comments

Despite preferring novellas to chunksters, I’ve a fair few of the latter under my reading belt. A good doorstopper which swerves baggy over-indulgence can be a source of great pleasure. I’ve already written about five that fit that bill then posted five more. Below is another batch, all but one with a link to a

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Six Degrees of Separation – We Have Always Lived in the Castle to These Precious Days

1 November 2025 / 24 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 Close Range by Annie Proulx

Blasts from the Past: Close Range by Annie Proulx (1999)

31 October 2025 / 14 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 was a bookseller when Annie Proulx’s Shipping News became one of those runaway bestsellers every second customer

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