WELCOME TO MY BOOKSHELF

New York City, 2020. Darla Jacobson and her husband Theo Harper are about to leave their Brooklyn apartment building to spend the summer...

Great Granny Webster is a great little novel by Caroline Blackwood. In 1977, it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and legend has it...

A young woman falls in love, marries, starts her career, becomes a mother, experiences the joys and challenges of parenthood with her...

I loved  The Bee Sting , which I read when it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2023, and when my manager at the bookshop in Dublin...

“Joey felt that his romance with Daisy might ruin his life, but that didn’t stop him.” This line from the story Daisy’s Valentine opens...

Martyr!  is the debut novel by Iranian-American poet Kaveh Akbar and was one of last year’s buzzier books. I’m always curious about...

Aboard a space ship a crew of six astronauts, two women and four men, circle planet earth sixteen times in twenty four hours – and repeat...

There was always going to be only one theme with which I could start my reading year in 2025: motherhood. Or, even more fittingly,...

I feel somewhat rusty writing reviews, and  The God of Small Things  isn’t the most straightforward book to get back into it. But reading...

Shirley Jackson’s  The Haunting of Hill House  stands as a paragon of the horror genre, masterfully blending supernatural elements with...

Alasdair Gray's  Poor Things  is a literary marvel that effortlessly blends surrealist playfulness with a profound commentary on society...

Yewon, a young woman lost in a society that doesn’t know what to do with itself and its young, dreams of a hotel with infinite keys to...

In an underground bunker, in an unknown location, silent and armed men guard a cage that is home to thirty-nine women and one young girl....

I usually try to steer clear of such generalisations, but Irish literature holds a special place in my heart. I fell in love with it,...

Percival Everett is definitely one of my favorite discoveries of the past few years, and I am glad I only came to his writing with The...

On Christmas Eve 1617 a storm descends over the coast of Vardø, Noway’s far north and within the blink of an eye kills most of the...

It has been a good while since I have found the time to sit down and write up my thoughts on a book. So the books I want to review keep...

Roland Mitchell‘s life can only be described as dull. He has dedicated his life to studying Victorian poet Randolph Ash, without making...

Isn’t it wonderful to have these authors you just feel entirely safe with? I can open any Toni Morrison book and I know for sure that I...

Gilead, 1956. John Ames is dying. In his seventies, the preacher knows his time on earth is coming to an end. He should be ready to meet...