Book news, reviews and recommendations
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. I read U.S.A. not just years but decades ago. Both huge and experimental, it took me months to […]
Blasts from the Past: U. S. A. by John Dos Passos (1930-36) Read More »
Historical novelist Daniel Mason’s name will be well known to many readers, I’m sure. I remember The Piano Tuner causing quite a stir when it was published back in 2002 but it didn’t appeal to me. You might wonder, then, why I picked up A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth but its multitude
Five years ago I reviewed The Sunlit Night by Rebecca Dinerstein, as she was known then, describing it as ‘a quirky bit of escapism’. You can see why, given our current predicament, I was keen to read Hex hoping for something similar. Garlanded with praise from the likes of Jonathan Safran Foer and Emma Straub,
Hex by Rebecca Dinerstein Knight: A six-cornered love story with a botanical twist Read More »
June is usually the month when publishers present us with a plethora of summer reading designed to keep us entertained by the pool, although there’s not much chance of that this year unless you have your own. Not my kind of novel, on the whole, but Rebecca Kauffman’s The House on Fripp Island might be
Books to Look Out For in June 2020 Read More »
David Foekinos’ The Mystery of Henri Pick marks the beginning of a collaboration between publishers Pushkin Press and Channel 4’s Walter Presents, a streaming service which provides a good deal of my TV entertainment with its subtitled European drama. Even without that, I’d have been interested in this book whose blurb promised a novel about
The Mystery of Henri Pick by David Foenkinos (transl. Sam Taylor): Tailor made Read More »
If 2020 had gone according to plan I’d have posted about our four-day break in the lovely city of Ghent in March and we’d be enjoying ourselves in Northern Italy right now. So strange are the times we’re living in that I’m just relieved that everyone I know is safe rather than disappointed but I
Pandemic Travels From My Sofa: Scandinavia Read More »
Rather like Berlin, a New York setting is catnip for me. I only need to spot it in a novel’s blurb and it’s on my list which is not always a good thing. I’ve only visited the city once but I think it’s more its almost mythical aura that attracts me rather than the actuality
Five Novels I’ve Read Set in New York 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 – From The Road to Northanger Abbey Read More »
It was that title that attracted me to this collection of stories about immigrants and refugees, cleverly exemplifying the many idiosyncratic challenges English throws at those for whom it’s a second language. Born in a refugee camp in Thailand, Laotian writer Souvankham Thammavongsa is a poet whose own facility for language is demonstrated throughout this
Several times recently I’ve enjoyed novels I might have otherwise dismissed thanks to a puff from authors whose own work I particularly enjoy. In the case of Jessica Anthony’s Enter the Aardvark it was the ‘fresh, witty and smart’ comment from one of my all time favourites, Kate Atkinson, that sealed the deal. Without it,
Enter the Aardvark by Jessica Anthony: A winning combination of taxidermy and politics 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. I can’t remember how I came across Julia Blackburn’s gorgeously poetic novel. I’d left bookselling and wasn’t yet
Blasts from the Past: The Leper’s Companions by Julia Blackburn (1999) Read More »