Book news, reviews and recommendations
This first batch of June’s paperbacks has a distinctly Irish flavour beginning with one of my books of last year. Christine Dwyer Hickey writes beautifully crafted thoughtful novels, often from the perspective of women. Our London Lives is set against the backdrop of a vividly evoked London following Milly, eighteen and pregnant when she arrives […]
Paperbacks to Look Out For in June 2025: Part One Read More »
Six Degrees of Separation is a meme hosted by Kate over at Books Are My Favourite and Best. It works like this: each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six others to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the titles on the list,
Six Degrees of Separation – Long Island to The Lodgers 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 in as many hands as I could. Regular readers may have gathered that I’m fan of Colm Tóibín’s writing. His name appears on my About
Blasts from the Past: The Blackwater Lightship by Colm Tóibín (1999) Read More »
All but one of the books in this second instalment of May’s new fiction are by Irish writers, beginning with one from one of my favourites. Colm Tóibín’s Long Island is the sequel to his much-loved Brooklyn, taking up the story of Eilis Lacey in the 1970s, twenty years after we left her. Eilis is living
Books to Look Out For in May 2024: Part Two Read More »
The second part of March’s paperback preview begins with two novels on an art theme: one I’ve read and thoroughly enjoyed; the other I haven’t but it comes highly recommended. Maylis de Kerangal’s Painting Time follows one of three students who meet in Brussels while on a trompe l’œil course. Paula shares her small apartment
Paperbacks to Look Out For in March 2022: Part Two Read More »
A new Colm Tóibín always shines out like a beacon for me so I was delighted to be offered a proof of The Magician. Like his Booker-shortlisted The Master, which fictionalised the life of Henry James, Tóibín’s novel is about a towering literary figure, Thomas Mann, a writer I knew little about having only read
The Magician by Colm Tóibín: The complicated life of Thomas Mann Read More »
Six Degrees of Separation is a meme hosted by Kate over at Books Are My Favourite and Best. It works like this: each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six others to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the titles on the list,
Six Degrees of Separation – From Second Place to Wait for Me, Jack Read More »
When I first started this year’s Booker Prize wish list, I found it a bit of a struggle. Several of the books I’ve loved most this year have been translations – Jhumpa Lahiri’s Wherabouts, for instance – and obviously those don’t qualify. Then I read a novel I wanted to include at the last minute
My 2021 Booker Wish List Read More »
The heading for this post could just as easily be 10, 15 or even 50 Irish books I’ve read. So much of the quietly elegant, understated writing I admire turns out to be by Irish authors. Their work is often tinged with more than a little melancholy, perhaps only to be expected given their country’s
Five Irish Books I’ve Read Read More »
Six Degrees of Separation is a meme hosted by Kate over at Books Are My Favourite and Best. It works like this: each month, a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the others on the
Six Degrees of Separation – from Lincoln in the Bardo to Villette #6Degrees Read More »
Fewer treats than usual in May for me but three of them are from some of my favourite authors. It was a toss-up as to which one of them should lead this preview but in the end it had to be Elizabeth Strout. Anything is Possible is a novel told in stories linked to Lucy
Books to Look Out for in May 2017 Read More »