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Cover image for The Exhibitionist by Charlotte Mendelson

The Exhibitionist by Charlotte Mendelson: ‘Hearts are elastic, but only up to a point’ 

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Regular readers won’t be surprised to hear that it was the art theme that first drew me to Charlotte Mendelson’s The Exhibitionist but it’s a background note to the overriding one of dysfunctional families, another favourite, and they don’t come much more dysfunctional than the Hanrahans. Mendelson’s novel follows the family over a weekend when …

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Cover image for A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earthby Daniel Mason

A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth by Daniel Mason: Stories of history, science, discovery and outsiders

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Historical novelist Daniel Mason’s name will be well known to many readers, I’m sure. I remember The Piano Tuner causing quite a stir when it was published back in 2002 but it didn’t appeal to me. You might wonder, then, why I picked up A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth but its multitude …

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Hausfau by Jill Alexander Essbaum: Emma Bovary, a twenty-first century reprise

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Jill Alexander Essbaum’s debut is one of those books about which there’s been a good deal of eager anticipation in my neck of the Twitter woods. That way disappointment often lies but this twenty-first century take on Emma Bovary turns out to live up to all that’s been tweeted. Although Hausfrau is Essbaum’s first novel …

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