Book news, reviews and recommendations
Lauren Aliza Green’s debut is one of those novels whose blurb seduced me with a list of comparisons with authors whose names tick my literary boxes. I ought to know better by now although in this case it paid off pretty well. The World After Alice sees the wedding of her best friend to her […]
The World After Alice by Lauren Aliza Green: ‘How does someone survive this?’ Read More »
I read Mary Beth Keane’s Ask Again, Yes a couple of years ago finishing it with a vague feeling of disappointment. I’d expected the kind of undemanding read you can sink into and forget the world for a while but Keane’s novel fell just short of that mark. Something about The Half Moon made me
The Half Moon by Mary Beth Keane: A tale of shattered dreams and renewal 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. Friends are the new family has become something of a contemporary cliché. Perhaps its origins lie in the
Blasts from the Past: A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham (1990) Read More »
I put up my hand for Neel Patel’s Tell Me How to Be in response to the heartfelt, very personal enthusiasm of its editor. There’s such a difference between that and the hype that so often puts me off. Patel’s debut brings together a mother and her two sons one year after the sudden death
Tell Me How to Be by Neel Patel: ‘The things we most desire are not always what we need’ Read More »
I can’t resist a novel with a college reunion theme. There’s something about the idea of catching up with a group of people who met when young, although in the case of Ceridwen Dovey’s Life After Truth, the five main protagonists have remained good friends since Harvard, two of them married to each other. Dovey’s
Life After Truth by Ceridwen Dovey: Harvard revisited Read More »
I was delighted when I spotted Good Riddance in my Twitter timeline. I have such fond memories of reading Elinor Lipman’s novels. She writes the kind of sharply observed, absorbing and entertaining fiction that‘s just the ticket when you’re after an intelligent bit of escapism. With its story of a young woman, her widowed father
Good Riddance by Elinor Lipman: Feel-good fiction Read More »
It was its structure that attracted me to Miranda Popkey’s Topics of Conversation. That and its cover image of two women alongside each other rather than face to face intrigued me. Popkey’s debut tells the story of an unnamed woman through the conversations she has with other women at various points in her life beginning
Topics of Conversation by Miranda Popkey: ‘Conversation is flirtation’ Read More »
Sometimes I need a glorious bit of good old-fashioned storytelling, something to bury myself in and distract myself from the world and its woes. Ann Patchett’s new novel, The Dutch House, is exactly that. It’s the story of an unusual, beautiful house, almost a work of art, and the obsessions it sparks. It’s also the
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett: Good old-fashioned storytelling Read More »
If you’ve been following this blog for any length of time you’ll know that I’m a Siri Hustvedt fan. Sixteen years after I first read it, What I Loved remains one of my favourite contemporary novels. It’s more accessible than the complex, intensely cerebral The Blazing World, her last novel published five years ago. Memories
Memories of the Future by Siri Hustvedt: ‘One story has become another’ Read More »
This is the first book written in English by Valeria Luiselli and I’m delighted to say it’s been longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. I’ve read only one of her novels, The Story of My Teeth, which I loved but which I gather isn’t typical of her work. Lost Children Archive is a response
Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli: Recording and bearing witness Read More »
There’s a quote from the Washington Post on the back of my proof comparing Joan Silber to Alice Munro which both piqued my interest and made me a little wary when approaching Improvement. Munro’s quietly insightful writing, uncluttered with fussy ornament, is right up my literary street but such comparisons so often lead to disappointment.
Improvement by Joan Silber: If you like Alice Munro… Read More »