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...
- 6 days ago
- 2 min
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...
- Jul 5
- 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 28
- 1 min
When Panic Attacks by Dr Áine Tubridy
Panic attacks affect millions of people and can be debilitating. Depending on the severity of the disorder, and the frequency of the...
- Jun 21
- 2 min
Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal by Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin
Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal is a conversation between linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky and economist Robert Pollin...
- Jun 14
- 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
- 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,...
- May 24
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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 11
- 3 min
My Top Reads of 2021
Here are the top 5 fiction and non-fiction books out of the 73 I’ve read this year. Fiction: Beloved by Toni Morrison Beloved is a...
- Jan 4
- 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...
- Oct 26, 2021
- 2 min
Lost in Translation: Life in a New Language by Eva Hoffman
In 1959, when Eva Hoffman was just 13 years old, her family decided to turn their back on the prevalent anti-Semitism in Poland and...
- Oct 19, 2021
- 3 min
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
It is late summer in Vermont in the 1980s and Richard Papen has just moved to the East Coast from California to study at the liberal arts...
- Oct 12, 2021
- 2 min
The Good Immigrant by Nikesh Shukla
What does it mean to have to change your name for your classmates to be able to pronounce and remember it? How does it feel to be...
- Oct 5, 2021
- 2 min
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
The family Gifty remembers from early childhood is a family of four, that quickly became a family of three and way too soon was cut into...
- Sep 28, 2021
- 3 min
Our Bodies Their, Battlefields by Christina Lamb
Our Bodies, Their Battlefields is a brutal, shocking, devastating read. And it could not be any other way. Christina Lamb, co-author of I...
- Sep 21, 2021
- 2 min
Strange Flowers by Donal Ryan
Moll Gladney is a quiet girl, not known to cause troubles to her devout and hardworking parents. But one night she disappears from her...
- Sep 14, 2021
- 3 min
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Frederic Henry, known simply as “tenente” by most, is an American lieutenant fighting with the Italian Army in World War I. He meets the...
- Sep 7, 2021
- 2 min
All That Is Worth Remembering
“We may be intolerant even in advocating the cause of Toleration, and so bent on making proselytes to free-thinking as to allow no one to...
- Aug 31, 2021
- 4 min
Famiglia di Natalia Ginzburg
(english version below) Famiglia di Natalia Ginzburg contiene due novelle sulla vita della borghesia romana nella seconda metà del secolo...
- Aug 24, 2021
- 2 min
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Desiree and Stella Vignes are identical and inseparable. Only those who know them well will be able to tell them apart: Desiree, the...
- Aug 17, 2021
- 2 min
Normal People by Sally Rooney
The social laws of high school dynamics govern Connell and Marianne’s behaviour. He is the popular star of the school’s football team,...
- Aug 10, 2021
- 2 min
Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall
The term intersectional feminism was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw to highlight how different dimensions of oppression – for example sexism...
- 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...
- Jul 27, 2021
- 3 min
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
Moscow, 1922. Count Alexander Rostov – member of the Jockey Club, Master of the Hunt – faces a Bolshevik tribunal and the end to life as...
- Jul 20, 2021
- 2 min
A Little History of Religion by Richard Holloway
In face of the recent war in Israel and Palestine (and the outbreak of sharing other people’s 240-character opinions on social media), I...
- Jul 13, 2021
- 3 min
Ich Würde So Etwas Nie Ohne Lippenstift Lesen von Michaela Karl
Heute ist sie fast in Vergessenheit geraten, doch einst war Maeve Brennan gefeierte Autorin und Ikone der New Yorker Modewelt. Die schöne...
- Jul 6, 2021
- 3 min
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
Frank and April Wheeler’s life in the suburbs of Connecticut might look very typical to the untrained eye: two children and a charming...
- Jun 29, 2021
- 2 min
Voices of the Lost by Hoda Barakat
Five letters that will never reach their destination, written by five unnamed people who come from an unnamed, war-torn country form the...
- Jun 22, 2021
- 3 min
all about love by bell hooks
Feminist writer bell hooks’ All About Love: New Visions is a passionate exploration of how we do and appeal to how we should love. What...
- Jun 15, 2021
- 3 min
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
The pain of growing up is the main character in Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Woods. Toru Watanabe finds himself at a crossways, having to...
- Jun 8, 2021
- 3 min
Il Diavolo, Certamente di Andrea Camilleri
(english version below) Andrea Camilleri è l’autore molto amato dei romanzi polizieschi sul commissario Montalbano (28 romanzi ed alcuni...