Book news, reviews and recommendations
Back in 2001, I was very taken with a novel called Pages for You. It was a love story, telling of the intense almost visceral affair between seventeen-year-old Flannery and her teacher Anne, ten years her lover’s senior. Since then I’ve read and thoroughly enjoyed Sylvia Brownrigg’s The Delivery Room, a very different novel. When […]
Pages for Her by Sylvia Brownrigg: Flannery and Anne reprised Read More »
Regular readers of this blog will probably know that I’ll take any opportunity to bang on about Nickolas Butler’s debut Shotgun Lovesongs. I even managed to get it into my first Six Degrees of Separation post. No surprise, then, that The Hearts of Men was one of the books I was looking forward to most
The Hearts of Men by Nickolas Butler: What maketh the man? Read More »
I liked the sound of Ann Leary’s new novel even before I remembered how much I’d enjoyed The Good House. Looking back at my review of that I see that I was after something ‘absorbing but relatively unchallenging’ thanks to the befuddlement of a cold. This time I was engaged in that traditional British summer
The Children by Ann Leary: Happy families Read More »
Every now and then a book comes along about which it’s hard not to gush. Victoria’s Redel’s lovely Before Everything fits that bill for me. I was very much attracted by its premise – five women, friends since school, come together when one of them is dying – but I hadn’t expected the bonus of
Before Everything by Victoria Redel: A gorgeous paean of praise to friendship Read More »
I was delighted when I spotted Maile Meloy’s name in the publishing schedules. I’d enjoyed her previous novels, even going so far as to read her short stories – this was long before my conversion. Her writing is quite subtle, nuanced explorations of relationships and their dynamics. On closer inspection, it turned out her new
Do Not Become Alarmed by Maile Meloy: A literary thriller with a social conscience Read More »
I’ve been a fan of J. Robert Lennon’s fiction since reading The Funnies, way back when. I reviewed his last novel, Familiar, in the very early days of this blog and enjoyed it despite its rather messy conclusion. He’s a writer unafraid to take risks, a point that Broken River proves with its mashing together
Broken River by J. Robert Lennon: Literary mashup Read More »
I remember enjoying Allegra Goodman’s The Cookbook Collector very much when it was published back in 2010 which is partly what attracted me to The Chalk Artist, that and what promised to be an exploration of the all-consuming nature of gaming. I’m not a gamer but I am an obsessive reader and so I can
The Chalk Artist by Allegra Goodman: Winning and losing Read More »
This is the first English language novel I’ve read from Pushkin Press, a publisher of whom I’m very fond. Their books are often a little out of the way: Hiromi Kawakami’s dreamlike Record of a Night Too Brief, Auđur Ava Ólafsdóttir’s wacky Butterflies in November and Dorthe Nors’ Mirror, Shoulder, Signal with its out-of-step protagonist,
The Beautiful Bureaucrat by Helen Phillips: Out-Kafkaing Kafka Read More »
I was attracted to the premise of Pamela Erens’ slim, third novel before I remembered that I’d already read her second, The Virgins, set against the backdrop of a New England school rife with speculation about the golden couple of its senior year. Eleven Hours is entirely different. The titular hours are the length of
Eleven Hours by Pamela Erens: Hard labour Read More »
I first spotted The Nix back in September last year on our riding the Central European railways holiday. It was sitting on a table in the English bookshop wing of Dussmann’s in Berlin, too chunky to justify including in the luggage that had to be hefted on and off the train. It looked right up
The Nix by Nathan Hill: Nothing ventured, nothing gained Read More »
Rather like buses – you wait for ages then several come along in swift succession – my short story reviews seem be posted in clumps. A couple of weeks ago I reviewed Anna Noyes’ elegant Goodnight, Beautiful Women, attracted by the idea of a linked collection promised by the press release. It was its eye-catching
The Virginity of Famous Men by Christine Sneed: Short stories with humour and bite Read More »