British Fiction Archives - A Life in Books

Cover image for Almost Life by Karen Millwood Hargrave

Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave: ‘There is nothing we could not do together’

13 March 2026 / 11 Comments

I’d not read either of Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s previous novels, drawn to Almost Life by the blurb’s comparison with David Nicholls’s One Day half expecting to be disappointed. Spanning thirty-five years, it follows Laure and Erica who meet one summer morning in 1978 on the steps of Sacré Coeur when Erica smiles at Laure after […]

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Cover image for Days of Light by Megan Hunter

Days of Light by Megan Hunter: A life in six days

18 April 2025 / 18 Comments

I loved both The End We Start From and The Harpy which made me keen to read Megan Hunter’s Days of Light. She’s a poet whose use of language is often very striking, part of the attraction for me. This third novel tells the story of Ivy, the daughter of a bohemian Sussex family, through

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Cover image for The Photograph by Penelope Lively

Blasts from the Past: The Photograph by Penelope Lively (2003)

5 January 2024 / 30 Comments

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 in as many hands as I could. I’ve read several novels by Penelope Lively plus her lovely memoir, Ammonites and Leaping Fish, all of which

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Blasts from the Past: Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson (1995)

3 February 2023 / 33 Comments

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. Hard to imagine a time when Kate Atkinson wasn’t a literary household name, albeit one seemingly doomed not

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Cover image for A Little London Scandal by Miranda Emmerson

A Little London Scandal by Miranda Emmerson: Things do get better

28 August 2020 / 14 Comments

Miranda Emmerson’s Miss Treadway and the Field of Stars slipped under my radar when it was published a few years ago, probably because it was billed as crime fiction and I get enough of that through my almost nightly Walter Presents fix, but the title of this new one caught my eye. Set in 1967,

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Cover image for The Blind Light by Stuart Evers

The Blind Light by Stuart Evers: A tale of two families and a country

10 June 2020 / 10 Comments

Regular visitors may have noticed that I’m much more of a novella than a chunkster kind of reader, favouring concision over what so often turns into waffle, but I was attracted to Stuart Evers’ The Blind Light by its premise despite its 540+ pages. Spanning six decades, Evers’ novel tells the story of post-war Britain

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Blasts from the Past: The Leper’s Companions by Julia Blackburn (1999)

27 April 2020 / 12 Comments

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. I can’t remember how I came across Julia Blackburn’s gorgeously poetic novel. I’d left bookselling and wasn’t yet

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A Theatre for Dreamers by Polly Samson: Trouble in paradise

17 April 2020 / 14 Comments

I’d enjoyed all three books by Polly Samson I’d read before A Theatre for Dreamers arrived, including her cleverly linked collection of short stories, Perfect Lives. I reviewed her last novel, The Kindness, here back in 2015 which feels like an age ago now. She writes the kind of absorbing, character-driven fiction that can offer

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Don’t look at Me Like That by Diana Athill: A welcome reissue

3 January 2020 / 10 Comments

Unusually for me, my first 2020 review is of a book published last year, although to be strictly accurate, Diana Athill’s Don’t Look at Me Like That was first published in 1967. It’s her only novel and, given how much I admire her writing, I’m amazed that it took me so long to get around

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Blasts from the Past: Being Dead by Jim Crace (1999)

25 November 2019 / 8 Comments

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. I remember someone looking over my shoulder when I was reading Being Dead on my way home from

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Royals by Emma Forrest: The Princess and the pauper

13 November 2019 / 4 Comments

Royals is Emma Forrest’s fourth novel. I’d not read anything by her before but was attracted by the idea of a working-class Jewish boy drawn into the orbit of a poor little rich girl set against the background of London in 1981, the summer the city, or rather the entire country, found itself caught up

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