Book news, reviews and recommendations
Back in 2014 I fell in love with Charles Lambert’s autobiographical novel, With a Zero at its Heart. Made up of 24 themed chapters, each of which has 10 paragraphs of 120 words, it was a triumph of disciplined structure, much of it beautifully written. Naturally when I heard about his new novel I was […]
My fourth and final selection begins with an award-winning novel. After differing with both the Baileys and the Man Booker judges I’ve finally found a set I can agree with: the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. Of course, they’d made their minds up in June and I only got around to reading Jo Mazelis’ utterly engrossing
Books of the Year 2015: Part 4 Read More »
The last of my ‘books of the year’ posts begins with one of my two September favourites, Steven Galloway’s The Confabulist which tells the story of the man who killed Houdini not once, but twice. Far from a straightforward reimagining of the Houdini story Galloway’s novel is a very clever bit of business which didn’t
Books of the Year 2014: Part 3 Read More »
Looking back over the year for these three posts it seems that many of my favourite reads were crammed into the first two months of the year. March, however, saw only one, Shot gun Lovesongs, but that may well turn out to be my book of the year. Nickolas Butler’s American smalltown gem is a
Books of the Year 2014: Part 2 Read More »
If you’re from the UK, you’ll know exactly what I mean by a Marmite novel: you’ll either love it or hate it. Charles Lambert’s new novel is made up of 24 themed chapters, each of which has 10 paragraphs of 120 words and if you’re already stalking off towards the hate camp thinking ‘how tricksily
With a Zero at its Heart by Charles Lambert: A Marmite novel Read More »