Book news, reviews and recommendations
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 […]
The Silver Book by Olivia Laing: ‘We are all in danger’ Read More »
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?
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
Another Five Doorstopping Novels I’ve Read 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 – We Have Always Lived in the Castle to These Precious Days 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 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
Blasts from the Past: Close Range by Annie Proulx (1999) Read More »
Chloe Michelle Howarth’s Heap Earth Upon It is very different from Sunburn, her debut, a story of sexual awakening set across glorious hot summer days. This new one is a dark, brooding novel which follows the O’Learys who have left their home village hoping to put a distance between themselves and the most recent of
Heap Earth Upon It by Chloe Michelle Haworth: Truth will out Read More »
Another thin month for paperback goodies but there are a few that’ve caught my eye. Beginning in the 1970s, Jami Attenberg’s A Reason to See You has an appealing premise, following a mother and her daughters over forty years of social change. After the death of their father, Shelly heads for the West Coast, working
Paperbacks to Look Out For in November 2025 Read More »
I dithered about reading Andrew Michael Hurley’s Saltwash, put off by his reputation for writing folk horror, not a genre I’m attracted to, but I liked its premise so decided to take the plunge, helped along by a few NetGalley reviews by fans disappointed by its lack of menace. Tom and Oliver have been matched
Saltwash by Andrew Michael Hurley: ‘Tide in, tide out. All’s forgotten’ Read More »
Reviews of non-fiction are a rarity here – this is only my second this year – but arriving home from holiday, my heart sank at the prospect of winter which is what prompted me to read Kari Leibowitz’s book. How to Winter grew out of her PhD research after an article she wrote for The
How to Winter by Kari Leibowitz: Learning to love it Read More »
The Second World War and its aftermath shaped much of the second half of the twentieth century, economically, politically and socially. I’ve not read much fiction set during the war but the five below – all written long after the event – share that backdrop in one way or another, all with a link to
Five Books I’ve Read Set in the Second World War Read More »
I snapped up Souvankham Thammavongsa’s Pick a Colour as soon as I spotted it on NetGalley having enjoyed her 2020 Giller-Prize-winning short story collection, How to Pronounce Knife, in which she writes about the immigrant experience. Her new one is a novella set over one day in a nail salon run by Ning. They all
Pick a Colour by Souvankham Thammavongsa: A day in the life Read More »