Book news, reviews and recommendations
A little under a year ago I read Huma Qureshi’s short story collection Things We Do Not Tell the People We Love, enjoying it so much I jumped at the chance to review her first novel. Many of Qureshi’s stories explore family and relationship dynamics, a perennially interesting theme for me, as does Playing Games …
Playing Games by Huma Qureshi: ‘I thought I must have lost you’ Read More »
That eye-catching jacket, redolent of movie star glamour, might suggest a setting more alluring than Weston-super-Mare for Elizabeth Delo’s debut, Becoming Liz Taylor. No disrespect to any readers from the seaside resort but I have childhood memories of mud rather than the glorious sandy beaches of my hopeful imagination. Delo’s novel begins in Weston where …
Becoming Liz Taylor by Elizabeth Delo: ‘It was probably safe to dress up now’ Read More »
I finally got around to reading Caleb Azumah Nelson’s Costa First Novel Prize-winning Open Water just before putting my hand up for a copy of Small Worlds. Like many bloggers I follow, I was very taken with it. Hard to imagine that Small Worlds would be better but, for me, it was. Beginning in 2010, …
Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson: A place of safety and love Read More »
At first glance the blurb for Chetna Maroo’s Western Lane didn’t appeal with its mention of squash courts but it’s published by one of my favourite imprints so when it popped through my letterbox, I decided to give it a try. Maroo’s quietly perceptive debut follows a family, paralysed by grief and an inability to …
Despite its billing as a thriller, it was impossible for me to resist ex-bookseller Alice Slater’s debut. Set during the run up to Christmas, her hugely enjoyable novel follows Roach, who’s worked in the dingy Walthamstow branch of Spines for nine years, and Laura, one of three seasoned booksellers parachuted in with the aim of …
Death of a Bookseller by Alice Slater: A trip down memory lane 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 into as many hands as I could. Coupling sensual prose with perceptive, sometimes chilling, characterisation, Joanna Briscoe’s Sleep with Me grips from the first page …
Blasts from the Past: Sleep with Me by Joanna Briscoe (2005) Read More »
I’ve not had much success with Jonathan Coe’s recent novels. Despite winning the Costa Novel Award, Middle England hit a low point for me but I liked the sound of Bournville which tells the story of Britain from V. E. Day in 1945 to its seventy-fifth anniversary in 2020 through one extended family who begin …
Bournville by Jonathan Coe: ‘Everything changes, and everything remains the same’ Read More »
It feels like a very long time since Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire dropped through my letter box and indeed it is five years but given all that’s happened in the world, it seems much longer. I’ve read all her novels and, despite enjoying each of them, Burnt Shadows remained my favourite but with its exploration …
Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie: The personal and the political Read More »
Two things attracted me to Joanna Campbell’s Instructions for the Working Day: firstly, its setting in the old East Germany which I’ve visited a few times; secondly, Claire Fuller’s puff extolling its virtues. Set in a dilapidated village, Campbell’s novel follows Neil Fischer who has inherited this settlement from his father whose childhood home it …
Instructions for the Working Day by Joanna Campbell: The high cost of freedom Read More »
I couldn’t resist C. E. Riley’s Is This Love? after reading the blurb: the story of a marriage breakdown is told by one of the parties whose gender is never revealed through a narrative addressed to their wife interspersed with diary entries plus transcripts of her testimony to her solicitor. Something of a daring structure …
Is this Love? By C. E. Riley: Who’s telling the truth here? Read More »
It’s seven years since I reviewed Jo Bloom’s debut, Ridley Road, based on a conversation she’d overheard between her grandfather and an old friend. You may have watched the BBC’s excellent adaptation of this novel about fascism in ‘60s East End London. I enjoyed it very much and was eager to read her new book …