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...
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- Sep 21, 2022
- 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...
- Aug 9, 2022
- 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, 2022
- 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...
- Jul 5, 2022
- 2 min
The Echo Chamber by John Boyne
BBC talk show host George Beverly and his family live a comfortable life in their London home – until the trolls and woke people on...
- Jun 14, 2022
- 3 min
Swing Time by Zadie Smith
Our narrator first met Tracey when they were young girls nervously waiting for their first dance class to start. Their friendship did not...
- May 24, 2022
- 2 min
Why Marx Was Right by Terry Eagleton
Why Marx Was Right is Terry Eagleton’s attempt at making Karl Marx’s theory accessible to all and to provide socialists with some...
- May 12, 2022
- 2 min
How to Live: A Life of Montaigne by Sarah Bakewell
How to live? Read a lot, forget most of what you’ve read, and be slow-witted! How do you make peace with the fact of death? How do you...
- Apr 26, 2022
- 2 min
The Women of Troy by Pat Barker
The Trojan War has left destruction in its wake. The city is defeated, its men have been murdered, and the women enslaved. But the Greek...
- Apr 19, 2022
- 3 min
The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante
“Two years before leaving home my father said to my mother that I was very ugly,” is the brutal opening line of Elena Ferrante’s most...
- Apr 12, 2022
- 5 min
If This Is a Man by Primo Levi
What can you say about a work such as this? It has been several weeks now since I read it, and I still feel lost for words. If This Is a...
- Mar 23, 2022
- 2 min
Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller
First developed in the 1940s, attachment theory originally dealt with the relationship between infants and their caregivers and is one of...
- Mar 17, 2022
- 3 min
Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah
Uncle Aziz comes by the house every year. His visits are always a cause for excitement. The wealthy merchant and his men are not only...
- Mar 2, 2022
- 3 min
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Holden Caulfield has been expelled from his prep-school. Again. Having failed all subjects but English he now has to pack his bags and go...
- Feb 15, 2022
- 2 min
Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
It is hot in this 1960s Harlem summer where we meet Ray Carney for the first time. A respectable furniture salesman, Carney is well-liked...
- Feb 8, 2022
- 2 min
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
It is a bitter cold winter in Ireland, 1985. We are in a small town, among good Christian citizens and meet Bill Furlong, the coal...
- Feb 2, 2022
- 2 min
Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney
Frances and Bobbi are students at Trinity College, Dublin. They used to be lovers, now they are best friends who perform poetry together....
- Jan 25, 2022
- 2 min
Tar Baby by Toni Morrison
L’Isle des Cheavliers is a tropical paradise where the rich American candy manufacturer Valerian Street has chosen to retire with his...
- Jan 18, 2022
- 2 min
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal have been best friends since their adventures during World War II, though none of their friends and family...
- Jan 4, 2022
- 2 min
Milkman by Anna Burns
In an unnamed city, where two communities live in conflict with each other, where there is a right and a wrong kind of butter, just as...
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