Book news, reviews and recommendations
Despite very much enjoying Emma Jane Unsworth’s Hungry the Stars and Everything almost four years ago, I still haven’t got around to reading Animals. It’s been quite some time since that was published but I’d be surprised if fans don’t think Adults was worth the wait. It’s the story of Jenny, fast approaching middle-age, who’s […]
Adults by Emma Jane Unsworth: Growing Up is Hard to Do Read More »
The first batch of February’s paperback goodies didn’t set foot outside America but this second instalment starts in the heart of Europe with Robert Menasse’s The Capital, something of a bittersweet read for me given my country’s Brexit shenanigans. This sprawling novel takes a sharply satirical view of the European Commission, exploring its many accumulated
Paperbacks to Look Out For in February 2020: Part Two Read More »
Timur Vermes is clearly not a man to shy away from controversy. His sharp, very funny satire, Look Who’s Back, nailed the internet’s potential for political manipulation with admirable, if unsettling, prescience when Hitler wakes up with a bad headache in 2011 and quickly becomes a YouTube star. The Hungry and the Fat takes on
If you inhabit the same neck of the Twitter woods I do, you may have spotted Jeanine Cummins’ American Dirt some time ago. It’s one of those books that’s been trailed for many months which usually presses my sceptical button but I have to say it’s the real deal. This extraordinary novel explores the theme
American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins: Written from the heart Read More »
February’s packed with enough paperbacks to stave off the miseries of a Northern hemisphere winter, several of which I’ve already read and can heartily recommend. I’ll begin with Siri Hustvedt’s Memories of the Future, a slice of metafiction in which a writer comes across the notebook she kept in 1978, the year she arrived in
Paperbacks to Look Out For in February 2020: Part One Read More »
I liked the sound of Ani Katz’ A Good Man, even before it started popping up in my Twitter timeline. It seemed to be about a family man who adores his wife and daughter but fails to protect them, something he considers to be his job. I’d had hopes of an interesting examination of how
A Good Man by Ani Katz: What makes a man ‘good’ Read More »
Unusually for me, this is the third book I’ve reviewed this year which is far from shiny and new. Something of an American publishing sensation, Ann Petry’s The Street was the first novel by a black woman to sell over a million copies in 1946. This new edition is introduced by Tayari Jones, whose An American
The Street by Ann Petry: Walls closing in Read More »
This second batch of February’s new titles begins with one I’m eagerly anticipating although a novel set against the backdrop of the Thirty Years’ War wouldn’t usually appeal. Daniel Kehlmann’s Tyll is based on the German legend of the eponymous trickster, born in an ordinary village but destined to expose the folly of kings and
Books to Look Out For in February 2020: Part Two Read More »
I’ve yet to read Magda Szabó’s The Door despite having enjoyed both Katalin Street and Iza’s Ballad. Abigail is very different from either of those, not least in its length, but it comes billed as the most popular of her novels in her native Hungary. Set in a girls’ boarding school, it’s about Gina whose
Abigail by Magda Szabó (transl. Len Rix): Coming of age in 1940s Hungary Read More »
I feel I should have heard of Kim Young-Ha before Diary of a Murderer and Other Stories turned up given that several of his many books have been translated into English. He’s well known in his native South Korea, having won every notable literary prize going, apparently. That alone would have piqued my interest but
February may be the shortest month but it’s jam-packed with potential literary goodies. This first instalment is pretty well all about women beginning with Jenny Offil’s Weather which sounds very much like a novel for our times. Librarian Lizzie Benson is asked by her old mentor to take on the job of answering the mail
Books to Look Out For in February 2020: Part One Read More »