January 31, 2019 Melmoth by Sarah Perry Review by Alice Farrant Helen Franklin is self-repressed, restricting herself from all that is pleasurable or happy. She merely exists alongside Prague, parallel to…
January 29, 2019 Things We Nearly Knew by Jim Powell Reviewed by Susan Osborne Jim Powell’s Things We Nearly Knew is a slice of American smalltown life seen through the eyes of an unnamed…
January 29, 2019 Save Me the Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald Reviewed by Harriet Written in just two months while its author was a patient in a psychiatric clinic, Zelda Fitzgerald’s first and only novel…
January 24, 2019 Dark Water by Elizabeth Lowry Reviewed by Anne Goodwin Twenty-one-year-old Hiram Carver, assistant surgeon on the USS Orbis in 1833, senses something special about William Borden when he first…
January 22, 2019 Middle England by Jonathan Coe Reviewed by Annabel By the time I’d finished reading Coe’s latest novel, it was about a fortnight after publication and by this time he…
January 22, 2019 The Adventures of Owen Hatherley in the Post-Soviet Space by Owen Hatherley Review by Karen Langley Author Owen Hatherley has carved out a niche for himself as one of the UK’s foremost commentators on matters architectural…
January 17, 2019 Berta Isla by Javier Marías Translated by Margaret Jull Costa Review by Anna Hollingsworth I’m not one for classic spy stories: I don’t care if the martinis come shaken…
January 17, 2019 Dramatic Exchanges, selected & edited by Daniel Rosenthal Reviewed by Harriet When we think of London’s National Theatre, most of us will envisage the great concrete complex on the South Bank of…
January 15, 2019 Where Shall We Run To? by Alan Garner Reviewed by Annabel I’ve been a fan of Alan Garner’s novels ever since my childhood when I first encountered The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and its sequel The…
January 15, 2019 The Infinite Blacktop by Sara Gran Review by Basil Ransome-Davies At times crime fiction seems a genre so powerful that it sucks in and revitalises other forms. At others, literary…
