Two debut novels: Brown Girls, & Black Cake
Review by Liz Dexter I’d like to introduce you to two astoundingly accomplished debut novels, so well done that you would not think they were first novels; two voices we’d…
Great Literary Friendships by Janet Phillips
Reviewed by Harriet When you see the title of this book, you may think, as I did initially, that it was going to be about friendships between writers (Pope and…
Stalin’s Library, by Geoffrey Roberts
Review by Basil Ransome-Davies One review of this book has come on quite strong against Roberts’ view of Stalin – prominent among the twentieth century’s most publicised murderous dictators and…
little scratch by Rebecca Watson
Review by Anna Hollingsworth When a novel comes with praise like ”daringly experimental” and “dazzlingly original”, my eyebrow tends to go up. Really? “Original” sounds better on the blurb than…
Out of the Dark by David Gaffney
Review by Basil Ransome-Davies The title echoes that of Out of the Past, a canonical film noir that ends uncompromisingly in a double catastrophe and leaves the future of a…
Living and Dying With Proust, by Christopher Prendergast
Review by Rob Spence Like Joyce’s Ulysses, Proust’s A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu is seen as a kind of literary Everest, to be attempted only by the brave or…
Jane’s Country Year by Malcolm Saville
Reviewed by Harriet Jane woke slowly. For a long minute she lay drowsing with her eyes shut, wondering why the bed felt so different. She loved her own little bed…
Everything is True: A Junior Doctor’s Story of Life, Death and Grief in a Time of Pandemic, by Roopa Farooki
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster I don’t know about you, but I can’t get enough of Covid-19 chronicles. My favourites of the twenty-some I’ve read thus far have come from the…
1942: Britain at the Brink, by Taylor Downing
Reviewed by Basil Ransome-Davies As E. H Carr’s masterly introduction to the study of history, What Is History?, explains, the idea of a fully objective, neutral and truthful history is…
White Debt by Thomas Harding
Review by Liz Dexter As a child, I was taught that Britain had been the first nation to abolish slavery, that the effort had been led by the politician William…
Longing and Other Stories by Jun’ichiro Tanizaki
Translated by Anthony H Chambers and Paul McCarthy Review by Anna Hollingsworth In the UK, readers know their Murakamis and convenience store women. Jun’ichiro Tanizaki is much less known to…
This Sacred Life: Humanity’s place in a wounded world by Norman Wirzba
Review by Peter Reason What does it mean to see the world, and life on Earth, as sacred? How might this change our approach to life? These are questions that…
My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson
Review by Max Dunbar The House of Tradition The grand houses of American history attract plenty of visitors wanting to learn about the Civil War, slavery and the founding fathers….