Book news, reviews and recommendations
I was a little wary of reading Delphine de Vigan’s latest novel having had mixed experiences with her writing – I loved Based on a True Story, was disappointed by Loyalties and enjoyed Gratitude – but the premise of Kids Run the Show was such an interesting one I put up my hand when I […]
Kids Run the Show by Delphine de Vigan (transl. Alison Anderson): No, they don’t Read More »
Christmas is well and truly in publishers’ sights come November with lots of big hitting titles taking centre stage. Fewer appealed to me than usual, just enough for one lengthy post rather than the two I was expecting, starting with one from an author who was once a favourite of mine. There was a time
Books to Look Out For in November 2023 Read More »
No prizes for guessing which novel will be piled sky high in bookshops this Christmas with the announcement of a new Kate Atkinson. Shrines of Gaiety is set in London in 1926 with the city’s nightlife back in full swing after the war. Nellie Coker is making the most of the opportunities on offer, determined
Books to Look Out For in September 2022: Part One Read More »
Part two of January’s preview kicks off with a debut from a former Waterstones bookseller: When All is Said by Anne Griffin. Over the course of a single evening, eighty-four-year-old Maurice Hannigan raises five toasts to five different people all of whom have changed his life in different ways, all of whom are now gone.
Books to Look Out for in January 2019: Part Two 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 other books to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the others on the
Six Degrees of Separation – from Tales of the City to The Book of Salt #6Degrees Read More »
Two titles were in tight competition for the top of this short list of July paperbacks, so tight that I’ve decided to take them in alphabetical order. Chloe Benjamin’s The Immortalists is one of those books surrounded by the kind of social media brouhaha that so often promises the world but delivers a pale imitation.
Paperbacks to Look Out for in July 2018 Read More »
It’s been a very long time since I read Flaubert’s tale of a doctor’s wife, bored to tears by provincial life and seeking diversion in adultery, but not so long since I read Sophie Divry’s slightly eccentric debut, The Library of Unrequited Love which I thoroughly enjoyed. It’s always a risky business when an author
Well, knock me down with a feather! I would never have expected to be posting a two-part November hardback preview. Often it’s a rather dull publishing month but here it is: part one of two starting off with a new Jonathan Coe. I’m treating this one with caution as after many years of Coe fandom
Books to Look Out For in November 2015: Part 1 Read More »
Bit of a lean month for those of us who tend towards the more literary end of fiction. The novel that stands out above all others for me is Golden Age, the final part of Jane Smiley’s The Last Hundred Years Trilogy. Some Luck followed the Langdon family from just after the First World War,
Books to Look Out For in October 2015 Read More »