Book news, reviews and recommendations
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
Permission by Jo Bloom: ‘We need to talk’ Read More »
Obviously, I couldn’t resist Bea Setton’s Berlin despite reading both Frieidrichstrasse 19 and Marzhan, Mon Amour in quick succession earlier in the year, also set in one of my favourite European cities. Setton’s debut is very different from the others which tell the story of two neighbourhoods through the people who live in them. This
Berlin by Bea Setton: The art of self-sabotage Read More »
I knew about James Cahill’s Tiepolo Blue back in October, alerted to it by a copy editor friend who’d loved it. A knows her literary onions so I was primed and ready to go when Cahill’s debut started popping up on my Twitter timeline although even without her recommendation, I would’ve been keen. Set in
Tiepolo Blue by James Cahill: Dr Faustus, I presume? Read More »
I’m always pleased when a book’s title and cover suit it as well as Chloë Ashby’s do for Wet Paint. Both were what made me put up my hand for a proof, intrigued by that title, which turns out to be a neat metaphor, and the jacket which suits its narrator perfectly. Ashby’s debut is
Wet Paint by Chloë Ashby: ‘I’m fine’ Read More »
It’s unlikely that readers won’t already know about Booker Prize-winning Douglas Stuart’s new novel. Young Mungo has been all over my Twitter timeline for months. Despite the usual reservations about second novels, I was champing at the bit for a copy then circled around it in the same way I did with Shuggie Bain, suspecting
Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart: ‘He had so little to fear now’ Read More »