Book news, reviews and recommendations
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 – After Story to The Lie of the Land Read More »
May’s first batch of paperbacks features lots of Irish writers beginning with last year’s Booker winner, followed by a close contender. I’d been so impressed by Paul Lynch’s Beyond the Sea I was delighted when Prophet Song popped through my letterbox. Set in a near future Ireland in the grips of an increasingly authoritarian regime
Paperbacks to Look Out For in May 2024: Part One Read More »
June’s new fiction begins with two novels from what seems to be a never-ending stream of extremely talented Irish women writers, the first distinctly urban, the second rural. Caroline O’Donoghue’s The Rachel Incident is a witty coming-of-age story about the eponymous Rachel and her gay friend, James, who share a dilapidated house in Cork in
Books to Look Out For in June 2023: Part One 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 Wintering to Winter Read More »
I was brought up in the countryside but I’m much more comfortable living in an urban environment, a small city rather than a metropolis where cinema, galleries and music venues are all within walking distance, not to mention the odd bookshop or two. I love the beauty of landscape plus the odd glimpse of wildlife
Five Rural Novels I’ve Read Read More »
Amanda Craig’s The Golden Rule is the latest in a series of loosely interconnected novels which explore the state of my particular nation. I’m a sucker for this kind of fiction and have enjoyed several of Craig’s contributions to it including The Lie of the Land, a Brexit novel that, for me, was very much
The Golden Rule by Amanda Craig: ‘Do as you would be done by’ 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 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to Seven White Gates Read More »
The longlist for the only UK award that really excites me these days, The Women’s Prize for Fiction, is due to be announced next Thursday. Only novels written by women in English published between April 1st 2017 and March 31st 2018 qualify. Over the past few years I’ve failed miserably in my suggestions but truth
My wish list for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2018 Read More »
There’s an embarrassment of paperback riches this February. Lots to occupy those of us stuck in the depths of winter beginning with one of my books of last year. Amanda Craig’s The Lie of the Land explores the divisions between town and country through the clever, involving story of the Bredin family. Furious with the
Paperbacks to Look Out for in February 2018: Part One Read More »
Summer’s favourites wander around the world a little taking in novels from Scandinavia, South Africa and the USA, beginning in June with Monte Carlo, a book by a Belgian author. Ending on the night of the first moon landing in 1969, Peter Terrin’s novella tells the tale of a God-fearing mechanic who becomes obsessed with
Books of the Year 2017: Part Three Read More »
There’s something irresistible about a state-of-the-nation novel, even if that nation has shifted cataclysmically since the novel was conceived. This isn’t the first book in that vein Amanda Craig has written – I remember enjoying Hearts and Minds which explored the lives of immigrants in London a few years back. Two characters from that novel
The Lie of the Land by Amanda Craig: Something nasty in the woodshed… Read More »