Book news, reviews and recommendations
Set in seventeenth-century Denmark, Olga Ravn’s The Wax Child grew out of HEX, her play which premiered at the Royal Danish Theatre in 2023. It’s narrated by the titular wax child moulded by Christenze Kruckow, an impoverished noblewoman charged with witchcraft. Is that what harmful magic is? The thing everyone did to stop the hiccups? […]
Despite its door-stopping proportions I couldn’t resist Catherine Airey’s much trumpeted debut with its promise of an involving tale of two Irish sisters, one of whom emigrates to New York to take up an art school scholarship ticking two of my literary boxes. Máire and Rósín’s stories span decades beginning in the 1970s when they’re
Confessions by Catherine Airey: Choose your own adventure Read More »
As regular readers will know, I’m a keen Elizabeth Strout fan. I’ve been reading her fiction since Amy and Isabelle was first published in the UK, over twenty years ago now, and have enjoyed every one of her novels. Occasionally, there’s a tinge of disappointment but a slightly disappointing Strout is very much better than
Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout: When Olive met Lucy Read More »
I finally got around to reading Caleb Azumah Nelson’s Costa First Novel Prize-winning Open Water just before putting my hand up for a copy of Small Worlds. Like many bloggers I follow, I was very taken with it. Hard to imagine that Small Worlds would be better but, for me, it was. Beginning in 2010,
Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson: A place of safety and love Read More »
My sense of time has been off during the pandemic: sometimes an event seems as if it was just the other day, others years ago, both assumptions often prove to be wrong. Perhaps that’s why I was surprised to spot a new Elizabeth Strout in the publishing schedules, convinced that Olive, Again was only published
Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout: ‘We are all mysteries, is what I mean’ Read More »
I’m incapable of resisting a novel with a Cape Cod summer setting. Something about families thrust together in unaccustomed closeness, brought face to face with their pasts, usually with a few dark secrets thrown in, plus lovely descriptions of the New England coast. There’s usually one every year and this year’s is Miranda Cowley Heller’s
The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller: ‘This is the end of a long story’ Read More »
What a joy to spot a new Elizabeth Strout in the publishing schedules and an even greater one to find that it’s about the irascible yet essentially warm-hearted Olive Kitteridge from Strout’s eponymous Pulitzer Prize-winning book published in 2008. Olive, Again takes the same form as the original, comprising thirteen closely knit short stories in
Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout: Revisiting an old friend Read More »
Always a delight to open a new William Boyd and find it dedicated ‘To Susan’. Nothing to do with me, obviously, but still… Short stories are almost as welcome as a novel for me these days particularly when two of them are pleasingly lengthy. Boyd’s collection also includes seven much shorter stories but, perhaps inevitably
The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth by William Boyd: A satisfying snack Read More »
I started Salley Vickers’ Cousins a few days before the American Presidential election. It’s a bit of a doorstep, a literary family saga if you will, and I was in dire need of something to distract me from constantly looking at the polls. I finished it the day after the election but this is a
Cousins by Salley Vickers: A welcome and absorbing distraction Read More »
There’s been a great deal of buzz about this book, stretching as far back as the beginning of the year I seem to remember. I always think about the author when that happens. Such a whipping up of anticipation must feel like a great deal of pressure, particularly when you’re a young writer and it’s
Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey: Leavened with some much needed humour Read More »