Vita Nostra by Marina & Sergey Dyachenko
Prepare for the vaguest of reviews - but the secrets of this book cannot be given away. It’s been a few weeks since I have finished...
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- 4 days ago
- 3 min
Stoner by John Williams
There are some books that just seem to split humanity into two camps – and Stoner by John Williams is certainly one of them. Reading this...
- Nov 15
- 2 min
Foster by Claire Keegan
Perhaps my favourite author discovery of the year is Claire Keegan. I read her Booker Prize shortlisted novel Small Things Like These in...
- Nov 8
- 2 min
Autumn by Ali Smith
‘It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times.’ I love a good opening line. And how true, describing 2016, the year of chaos and...
- Nov 7
- 1 min
The Booker Prize 2022 #11: Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo
Unrest is spreading over Jidada. The Old Horse has fallen, the revolutionary government is replaced by a new self-proclaimed liberation...
- Nov 6
- 2 min
The Booker Prize 2022 #12: Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley
Kiara is seventeen and desperately trying to pay the rent that has been increased yet again. After her father’s death and with her mother...
- Nov 1
- 2 min
The Booker Prize 2022 # 10: Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer
Lia’s carefully calibrated life is about to be turned upside down yet again. The cancer she battled years ago is back. And spreading....
- Oct 12
- 2 min
The Booker Prize 2022 #9: After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz
At the beginning was Sappho, who spoke of her lovers and for sapphic women centuries on. Women – artists, writers, dancers, actresses –...
- Oct 11
- 2 min
The Booker Prize 2022 #8: Treacle Walker by Alan Garner
Joe is watching time pass by, measuring his days by Noony, the train that comes past his window once a day. He is all alone in his house,...
- Oct 7
- 2 min
The Booker Prize 2022 #7: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka
Maali Almeida is dead and has just woken up in the afterlife, though he does not know yet. For how he still believes he is having a weird...
- Oct 6
- 1 min
The Booker Prize 2022 #6: The Trees by Percival Everett
Money, Mississippi does not hold what its name promises but is home to an interesting set of characters who wake up to a series of brutal...
- Oct 4
- 2 min
The Booker Prize 2022 #5: Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet
The author GMB, interested in psychiatry and one prolific 1960s psychiatrist in particular, is trusted with a set of notebooks kept by...
- Sep 28
- 3 min
The Booker Prize 2022 #4: The Colony by Audrey Magee
Two men make their way to a tiny Irish island. On uncertain and uneasily, the other more self-assured. Mr Lloyd crosses the sea from...
- Sep 27
- 2 min
The Booker Prize 2022 #3: Booth by Karen Joy Fowler
Karen Joy Fowler’s new book is but isn’t the story of John Wilkes Booth, assassin of Abraham Lincoln. Is but isn’t because it tells the...
- Sep 26
- 2 min
The Booker Prize 2022 #2: Trust by Hernan Diaz
What do a novel, an unfinished autobiography, the manuscript for a ghost-written memoir, and a diary have in common? They are all parts...
- Sep 21
- 3 min
The Booker Prize 2022 #1: Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout
I’m starting my series of posts about this year’s Booker Prize longlist with a double review as I squeezed in Elizabeth Strout’s My Name...
- Sep 19
- 3 min
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
I finally listened to everyone telling me this was their favourite book and read The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. Does this...
- Sep 1
- 2 min
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
In For Who the Bells Tolls Hemingway takes us back to another European war: this time the Spanish Civil War. His hero, the American...
- Aug 9
- 2 min
This is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan
Michael Pollan is one of my favourite discoveries of recent years. This is Your Mind on Plants is his most recent book, consisting of...
- Aug 2
- 2 min
Without Warning & Only Sometimes by Kit de Waal
Without Warning & Only Sometimes author Kit de Waal’s childhood memoir. She up with an Irish mother who, as a Jehovah’s witness forbid...