A Year and a Day by Phillip Lopate
Review by Karen Langley The coming of the Internet and the development of blogging at the turn of the 21st century led to a resurgence of the personal essay, which…
Argylle by Elly Conway
Review by Annabel Let me explain. This Thursday, a film called Argylle reaches our cinema screens in the UK; you may even have seen the trailer (IMDB link here). This…
The Long-Winded Lady by Maeve Brennan
Review by Karen Langley There has been a resurgence of interest in the fiction writing of author Maeve Brennan recently, with her short stories in particular having gained much critical…
Shot with Crimson by Nicola Upson
Reviewed by Harriet This is the eleventh novel in Nicola Upson’s Josephine Tey historical crime series; we’ve reviewed four of them on here as well as her standalone fictional biography…
Shakespeare: The Man who Pays the Rent, by Judi Dench
Review by Elaine Simpson-Long If I had my way every single teacher in the land who is attempting to teach Shakespeare should have a copy of this to hand as,…
Day by Michael Cunningham
Review by Simon A new novel by Michael Cunningham is cause for celebration. I’ve read and loved all his novels – give or take a not-to-my-taste venture into science fiction…
The Bone Flower by Charles Lambert
Review by Rob Spence We are in London at its Victorian zenith, a city of imperial majesty, and also a city where the most abject poverty exists side-by-side with the…
Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward
Reviewed by Harriet The first weapon I ever held was my mother’s hand. I was a small child then, soft at the belly. On that night my mother took me…
You’re All Talk: Why We Are What We Speak by Rob Drummond
Review by Lix Dexter This is a book about the relationship between how we speak and who we are. More precisely, it’s a book about the role of spoken language,…
Fifteen Wild Decembers by Karen Powell
Reviewed by Harriet ‘I’m sick of those two.’ The words arrived in my mouth like hard, round pebbles, threatened to take up all the space. I stopped for a moment,…