WELCOME TO MY BOOKSHELF

As a chronic blurb avoider I go into many a book blindly. This is true for Elspeth Barker’s O Caledonia, a 1991 novel I haven’t seen...

"First, I got myself born. A decent crowd was on hand to watch, and they've already given me that much: the worst part of the job was up...

The seasons have changed, from Ali Smith’s Autumn but we are still in contemporary Britain and therefore still in political turmoil. Four...

Dublin, October 7, 2019. Two women wake up to a new day in the old city. Ruth and Pen do not know each other, they are at vastly...

I spent this November deep in the world of crime novels. I read cosy crime mysteries, expansive thrillers, there was even some...

Maggie is 29 years old, working on a PhD she is not actually all that interested in, and now about to be divorced – after only 608 days...

At nine years old, Sylvie meets her one great love at school in Paris: her best friend Andrée. The two girls could hardly be more...

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...

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...

Perhaps my favourite author discovery of the year is Claire Keegan. I read her Booker Prize shortlisted novel Small Things Like These in...

‘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...

Unrest is spreading over Jidada. The Old Horse has fallen, the revolutionary government is replaced by a new self-proclaimed liberation...

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...

Lia’s carefully calibrated life is about to be turned upside down yet again. The cancer she battled years ago is back. And spreading....

At the beginning was Sappho, who spoke of her lovers and for sapphic women centuries on. Women – artists, writers, dancers, actresses –...

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,...

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...

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...

The author GMB, interested in psychiatry and one prolific 1960s psychiatrist in particular, is trusted with a set of notebooks kept by...

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...