Book news, reviews and recommendations
Waiting for a Party is the second novel I’ve read by Vesna Main. I was so impressed by Good Day? I included it on my 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction wishlist, knowing it didn’t stand much chance, and so was pleased to see it on the Goldsmith’s Prize shortlist later that year. Her new one […]
Waiting for a Party by Vesna Main: ‘Memory is all. Memory is her life now.’ Read More »
I’d expected Guy Ware’s The Peckham Experiment to be about the eponymous community health initiative set up in the ‘20s which is what originally piqued my interest. That, and the premise of a brother spending the night before his identical twin’s funeral remembering the part they played in each other’s lives. In the event it
The Peckham Experiment by Guy Ware: Building the New Jerusalem, or not Read More »
I’m a reader rather than a collector which is probably a good thing, keeping my book acquisitions clear of duplicates (or worse) bought because I couldn’t resist a new edition’s cover. Nicholas Royle is both but his collecting habits are very particular: his imprint of choice is Picador, the white spined variety although he has
White Spines by Nicholas Royle: Confessions of a Book Collector Read More »
One of the very few silver linings to the coronavirus is a reported upsurge in book sales. We have booksellers, publishers, warehouse staff and posties to thank for getting hard copies to us, despite risks to themselves. You’re probably in the habit of browsing your local bookshop or maybe buying from online booksellers but small
Ten Small But Perfectly Formed Publishers Who Will Post Books to Your Home Read More »
This is the second jacket I’ve fallen in love with this year, another which fits its book perfectly. The other was the gloriously pink cover for Aylet Gundar-Goshen’s Liar. Always a joy when publishers use an image which is both strikingly original and appropriate. Vesna Main’s Good Day? recounts a daily conversation between a Writer
Good Day? by Vesna Main: When life mirrors fiction, or not Read More »
Four things attracted me to Andrew Cowan’s Your Fault: its working class, ‘60s setting; its unusual structure; its length and its publisher, Salt Publishing whose list is never anything but interesting. Set in one of those new towns beloved by British town planners of the mid-twentieth century, Cowan’s novella has fifty-five-year-old Peter tell his story
Your Fault by Andrew Cowan: A boy’s life Read More »
You may already know Meike Ziervogel’s name. She’s the founder of Peirene Press who publish three thought-provoking novellas in translation a year, several of which I’ve reviewed on this blog. Flotsam’s not her first book but it’s the first I’ve read by her. Set on the German coast in the 1950s, Ziervogel’s strange, unsettling novella
Flotsam by Meike Ziervogel: More than meets the eye Read More »
Back in 2012 Anna Stothard’s The Pink Hotel was longlisted for what was then the Orange Prize. In case you’re wondering Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles won it that year. I remember enjoying Stothard’s novel very much. It may have been the jacket with its powder blue, low slung car parked outside a pastel
The Museum of Cathy by Anna Stothard: Tainted love Read More »
One of the best commercial novels I read last year was Laura Barnett’s The Versions of Us. It explores the idea that our lives are shaped by chance and random acts as much as by the choices we make, following three possible lives for a couple who meet when they’re nineteen. I loved the idea
Used to Be by Elizabeth Baines: More than One Way to Tell a Story Read More »