The Inseparables by Simone de Beauvoir
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...
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- Nov 8, 2022
- 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, 2022
- 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 1, 2022
- 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, 2022
- 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, 2022
- 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 4, 2022
- 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, 2022
- 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, 2022
- 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, 2022
- 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, 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...
- 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...
- Jun 8, 2022
- 2 min
Dottie by Abdulrazak Gurnah
Dottie Badoura Fatma Balfour is seventeen years old and has just become the head of her small family in London. Her mother has just died,...
- 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...
- 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 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...
- Nov 2, 2021
- 5 min
The Booker Prize 2021
Tomorrow, the winner of the 2021 Booker Prize will be announced. Over the past few weeks I read my way through the shortlist, and it was...
- Aug 3, 2021
- 2 min
Grand Union by Zadie Smith
Grand Union is Zadie Smith’s collection of short stories, comprising eleven completely new works as well as eight stories previously...
- Mar 9, 2021
- 3 min
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Poetic and heart-breaking. Those are the first words that come to mind when I think about Toni Morrison’s masterpiece Beloved. I only...
- Dec 27, 2020
- 5 min
My 2020 Booker Prize Winner
Over the past few weeks I read my way through the 2020 Booker Prize Shortlist – and a month after Shuggie Bain has been announced the...
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