reviews
Jodie Jackson’s You Are What You Read: Why Changing Your Media Diet Can Change the World is what all good non-fiction should be – exciting, challenging and perceptive. That said, we are Jackson’s readership. The people who’ve stopped reading newspapers, watching the news, even watching terrestrial television because we’re irritated with the way in … Continue readings
Tags : balanced news, don't believe everything you read, intelligent news, Jodie Jackson, negative news, news cycles, questioning the news, Stephen Pinker, You Are What You Read
We do love a good storyteller and international bestselling writer Victoria Hislop is certainly that. From the days of highly acclaimed The Island, Hislop has captivated with her well-researched, historically based tomes. Those Who Are Loved, her latest offering which is published today, continues this trend. The frame for the book is an elderly … Continue readings
Tags : Athens 1939–45, Greece, Greece communism, Greek civil war, Greek during World War 2, Greek literature, islands of exile, Makronisos, resistance, The Island Victoria Hislop, Trikeri, Victoria Hislop, women's fiction
‘Let him be an example. My Frank. Of how to live best, and to stop all this death. Let them put down their knives, stop being ruled by fear. They are all so fearful, that’s why my boy died. Not because another kid was showing off, as the papers said, not muscles being flexed. … Continue readings
Tags : Bath writers, Best 2019 crime fiction, Brexit London crime fiction, crime fiction, Di Marnie Rome, London crime fiction, Marnie Rome, Marnie Rome series, Never Be Broken, procedural crime fiction, RIchard and Judy Book Club, Sarah Hilary, Theakston Crime Fiction of the Year
A beautifully nuanced novel, Permission by Saskia Vogel is a sometimes challenging and often lyrical exploration of longing, loneliness and loss. Following her father’s tragic death, LA actress Echo struggles to deal with her bereavement – ‘the gape of loss’. Cast adrift, she embarks on a series of meaningless encounters with men, before meeting … Continue readings
Tags : alternative lifestyle, BDSM, bereavement, community, debut 2019 novelists, dialogue books, grief, Hollywood, LA-based books, loss, permission, saskia vogel
‘Have you ever wondered how long it takes to dig a grave? Wonder no longer. It takes an age …” There’s nothing better than a good opener and, in this, debut novelist Catherine Steadman doesn’t disappoint, drawing us in from the very first line of the highly acclaimed Something in the Water. (Who … Continue readings
Tags : books to screen, Bora Bora, Breathless, Burnham Market, Catherine Steadman, Catherine Steadman actress, crime fiction, Downton Abbey, holiday reads, London, Midsommer Murders, North Norfolk, reading on location, Reese Witherspoon, Reese Witherspoon book club, Simon & Schuster, Some Thing in the Water, Something in the water, Switzerland
‘All of this started the night Will told us he was going to be a serial killer. He said, ‘Okay, I’ve decided what I want to do when I’m older…’ So begins SR Masters’ psychological thriller, The Killer You Know. It’s a great opening – suitably creepy and attention grabbing. And it’s a clever … Continue readings
We’ve already waxed lyrical about how much we love poetry and so Katya Boirand’s collection, Take Me to the Edge, published by Unbound, simply had to be read. It’s an interesting premise, to ask a selection of people, from different walks of life, for five words and then to weave them together into a … Continue readings
Sue Lawrence’s Down to the Sea joins the number of novels, at the moment being published, set in dual timelines. Moving between the early 1980s, when the book opens, and the late 1890s, it’s set in the Newhaven area of Edinburgh, by the sea. From the first words, we’re plunged into Rona and Craig’s … Continue readings
Set in Edinburgh in the 1840s, Ambrose Parry’s excellent The Way of All Flesh is an utter joy. From the very first line, we are immersed in the Victorian world of Will Raven, a struggling medical student, newly apprenticed to the eminent Scottish obstetrician Dr James Young Simpson. As the city is beset by … Continue readings
‘Proportionality bias is the instinctive notion that a large outcome must have had a large cause. It’s why we find it hard to accept that a princess can simply die in a car crash or that a lone sniper can take down a president. In a world that seems frighteningly chaotic, we crave a … Continue readings
When I first heard the premise for Louise Beech’s Call Me Star Girl, Clint Eastwood’s iconic film Play Misty for Me (1971) came to mind – late night DJ with potentially crazed stalker fan, murder, bloody murder, secrets and lies … Certainly, there’s something extremely filmic about the book and, like Eastwood, from the … Continue readings
Alice Jolly’s Between the Regions of Kindness takes its title from Naomi Shibab Nye’s poem ‘Kindness’ – ‘how desolate the landscape can be / between the regions of kindness’. Fourteen years in the making, the novel is a moving, rather beautiful in parts, exploration of loss, grief and culpability. Moving between the Second World … Continue readings
We’re great Tom Cox fans. We love him, in fact. He first came into our lives on Twitter, when we, like many, many others, followed the hilarious, poignant and sometimes quite daft escapades of his feline friends. This essay collection, 21st-Century Yokel, is, in fact, dedicated to two of them, his (and our) beloved … Continue readings
When I first read the precis of Joe Nutt’s The Point of Poetry, I wanted to read it. I’m a poetry gal – read it, write it, love it. Like a great piece of art or music, a poem that resonates is worth its weight in gold and Nutt’s book is a good introduction … Continue readings
Archie was fifty-two years old. One of life’s natural procrastinators, he was aware that life was passing him by. It was happening slowly, and without any real abrasion, but even in his positive moments, he acknowledged that he should do something about it. There were essentially four routes for his kind: the factory shift … Continue readings