Book news, reviews and recommendations
The slightly gushy letter that prefaces Meg Fee’s book of essays (at least in my proof copy) made me wonder if it would be for me but its premise – a young woman finding her way in New York City, always a lure – made me press on. Fee’s short pieces cover thirteen years, a […]
Places I Stopped on the Way Home by Meg Fee: Growing pains in New York Read More »
So much has been said about Paul Kalanithi’s account of the twenty-two months from his diagnosis with lung cancer to his death at the age of thirty-six that I’m not sure what I can add of any value except to tell you emphatically to read it. This week sees its paperback publication in the UK.
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi: Bearing witness 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 »
Back in 2012, I was sent a copy of Tim Winton’s Land’s Edge: A Coastal Memoir to read for a magazine I was working on. In it Winton writes about his passion for his country’s coastline, recalling childhood beach holidays then learning to surf as a lonely adolescent. I’d read and enjoyed Winton’s fiction but
Island Home by Tim Winton: A landscape memoir Read More »
I was more than a little surprised to be sent a new Jhumpa Lahiri. I’m pretty up and together on my ‘Books to Look Out For’ previews and I’d seen nothing in the fiction schedules. Then I spotted that it had been translated which discombobulated me further. Reading the press release I found that In
In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri (translated by Anne Goldstein): A passion for language Read More »
It’s February and as often happens at this time of the year I’ve been feeling a little sorry for myself – life’s a bit dull, I’m in one of my periodic energy dips and winter seems to have dragged on too long despite the fact that we’ve been spared the wet miseries of last year.
Girl in the Dark by Anna Lyndsey: Grace under pressure Read More »
When Will Boast shows a writer friend a fictionalised version of his family history she tells him ‘If you put all that in, no one will believe it’. Perhaps she might have said no one would want to believe it for much of his story is too sad, striking too close to home. By the
Epilogue by Will Boast: You wouldn’t make it up Read More »
I’ll read anything by Philippe Claudel. His prose has a lovely, elegant expressiveness to it, trimmed of the flourishes and curlicues that some writers indulge in. All four of his novels are very different, from the dystopian The Investigation to Monsieur Linh and his Child, one of the most heart-wrenching novels I’ve ever read. He’s
Being of a certain age, I have several over-80s in my life and have lost several more dear to me in recent years. Some have aged well – I have a lovely memory of my 90-year-old aunt executing high kicks in her kitchen a few months before she died, delighted when H couldn’t match her
Ammonites and Leaping Fish by Penelope Lively: Ageing with grace and eloquence Read More »
I’m a huge Ann Patchett fan and when I spotted her memoir in Bloomsbury’s catalogue it seemed the next best thing to a new novel. When it arrived I was a little disappointed as it turns out to be a collection of essays rather than continuous prose but after gobbling them all down I’ve come
This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett: Which is very much more than that Read More »
With an ironic nod to Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, food writer Anya von Bremzen and her mother set about recreating a series of meals emblematic of ten decades of Russian and Soviet cooking rather like Julia Powell’s tribute to her (almost) namesake in Julie and Julia. Von Bremzen and her mother