Book news, reviews and recommendations
I wasn’t at all sure about Strange Labyrinth when it turned up – it looked like a book that didn’t quite know what it was supposed to be about – but once started I was hooked, enchanted even. It tells the story of Epping Forest, the six thousand acres on the edge of London saved […]
Strange Labyrinth by Will Ashon: If you go down to the woods today… Read More »
Those much over-used epithets ‘epic’, ‘sweeping’ and ‘saga’ are useful signals when they crop up in press releases, semaphoring that the book in question is probably not for me. To be fair, they’re not words used to describe Sana Krasikov’s The Patriots but just for once they seem appropriate. This doorstopper of a novel, apparently
The Patriots by Sana Krasikov: Here we go again… Read More »
Gwendoline Riley is one of those authors whose work I feel I should have read before now but for some reason I’ve never got around to it. She’s quietly gathered a good deal of acclaim over the years since her first novel, Cold Water: First Love is her fifth. Given its title, you could be
First Love by Gwendoline Riley: A pin-point sharp novella Read More »
I first came across Diana Athill’s elegant prose in Stet, her account of her time at André Deutsch, the publishing house she co-founded in 1951 with her eponymous business partner. Deutsch was a refugee, one of the many who shaped modern British publishing. For readers who haven’t yet come across the book, it’s a treat
Alive, Alive Oh! by Diana Athill: A long life well lived Read More »
I’m something of a Sarah Moss fan having thoroughly enjoyed the closely linked Bodies of Light and Signs for Lost Children, set in the nineteenth century, and Names for the Sea, her account of her year spent in Iceland. Her writing draws you in: it’s imaginative, witty and she knows how to spin a good
The Tidal Zone by Sarah Moss: Living in uncertain times Read More »
It’s time for a new issue of Shiny New Books, packed with features, competitions, book news and reviews. With lots of contributions from a wide variety of bloggers and authors, it’s well worth a look and if you haven’t come across it yet I suggest you get yourself on over there. My own contribution to
Journeyman by Marc Bojanowski and a new issue of Shiny New Books Read More »
Hospital dramas abound on TV – Holby City, Gray’s Anatomy, ER, House – they’re not quite as ubiquitous as crime but it seems odd that they’re notable by their absence from fiction given their enduring popularity. Its setting was partly what attracted me to Austin Duffy’s novel; that and the fact that he’s a practising
This Living and Immortal Thing by Austin Duffy: Of mice and men Read More »
Female friendship is a frequent theme in fiction, or at least what’s often dubbed as ‘women’s fiction’ – a label best avoided in my view. It can be more than a little idealised but that’s not an accusation that could be levelled at Rachel B. Glaser, for sure. Her first novel, Paulina & Fran, is
Paulina & Fran by Rachel B. Glaser: Friendship, warts and all Read More »
‘Tis the season of ghost stories. Halloween’s long past, I know but Christmas, when lots of us are cosily tucked up at home, offers the perfect opportunity for a few ghostly frissons. Lorna Gibb’s A Ghost’s Story is somewhat different from the more traditional scare-yourself-rigid variety such as Susan Hill’s splendidly terrifying The Woman in
A Ghost’s Story by Lorna Gibb: A matter of punctuation Read More »
Much to my surprise it seems to have turned into short story week here. Unusually for me, I came to Amy Bloom’s writing through her short fiction. It was back in the ’90s and I was a bookseller at the time. When I was shown her first volume a great deal was made of her
Rowing to Eden by Amy Bloom: Short stories for novel readers Read More »
Sarah Moss’s excellent Bodies of Light appeared on the Wellcome Trust Book Prize shortlist for its theme of nineteenth century women in medicine earlier this year. Signs for Lost Children is its sequel, picking up Ally and Tom’s story from where Bodies of Light left off. Newly married, they face separation as Ally practices as a
Signs for Lost Children by Sarah Moss: What Ally and Tom did next Read More »