Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead
Reviewed by Victoria If, like me, you can dimly remember the furore that arose when Mikhail Baryshnikov defected to the United States, and if, like me, you thought he was…
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Researching ‘A Curious Friendship, by Anna Thomasson
I first came across Rex Whistler some years ago at Plas Newydd on Anglesey. There he had painted his largest and most famous mural, begun in 1936. The dining room…
A Curious Friendship by Anna Thomasson
Reviewed by Simon The subtitle of Anna Thomasson’s biography, A Curious Friendship: the Story of a Bluestocking and a Bright Young Thing, belies the publisher’s expectations about the reputations of its…
The Art of Being Normal by Lisa Williamson (YA)
Reviewed by Bookgazing. David is a social outcast; dubbed ‘Freakshow’ by the bullies at his posh school, Eden Park, and hopelessly in love with the most popular boy in school….
Little Tales of Misogyny by Patricia Highsmith
Reviewed by Gill Davies This collection of stories, in the Virago Modern Classics series, was first published in German in 1975 (in English in 1977). The stories thus emanate from…
I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson (YA)
Review by Bookgazing. ‘This is a story about love,’ Jandy Nelson says in her preface to I’ll Give You the Sun ‘crazy complicated love of all kinds: between guys and girls, guys…
The Field of the Cloth of Gold by Magnus Mills
Reviewed by Annabel Mills is one of my favourite authors; a new novel from him is a must-read for me. He has found a unique furrow in the world of…
The Vagrant by Peter Newman
Reviewed by David Harris ‘The Vagrant is his name’ runs the strapline for this book. ‘He has no other.’ In fact, the titular character is never called ‘The Vagrant’ by…
Alice and the Fly by James Rice
Reviewed by Meghan Alice and the Fly opens with Greg, a very shy, awkward teen boy who is deathly afraid of Them – spiders. This fear permeates many of his thoughts, and amongst…
Glass by Alex Christofi
Reviewed by Paul Fishman Why Glass? And, for that matter, why glass? Well, first there’s the protagonist, or hero of sorts, Günther Glass. (Yes, it’s a play on words and a…
Onward Toward What We’re Going Toward by Ryan Bartelmay
Reviewed by Victoria This is a debut novel from a short story writer, and there’s a way in which you can sense the palimpsest of shorter fiction underneath the sweep…
Five Children on the Western Front by Kate Saunders
Reviewed by Harriet I hope some children today still read E. Nesbit as avidly as I did, and my own children did. I loved everything of hers, but a particular…
Five Fascinating Facts About… Winston Graham
Compiled by Annabel. 1. Born in 1908 in Manchester, the Graham family moved to Perranporth in Cornwall when Winston was seventeen. He stayed there until 1959, eventually settling in East…
Ross Poldark by Winston Graham
Reviewed by Annabel In recent weeks, it seems that the entire female population of the UK (well, at least all those of a certain age!), have been glued to our…
The Bees by Laline Paull
Reviewed by Bookgazing Click HERE for more shininess about The Bees… Flora 717 begins life as a voiceless sanitation worker, set to clean bodies and waste from her hive. She occupies the…
The Exit by Helen Fitzgerald
Reviewed by Harriet He offered to show me around, but I said I was in a hurry. I didn’t want to see old people unless somebody was paying me for…
The Shore by Sara Taylor
Reviewed by David Hebblethwaite In Sara Taylor’s debut novel, ‘the Shore’ is the name given to a group of three islands off the coast of Virginia. It’s a flat, largely…
The Eds Discuss: Book Groups
Love them or loathe them, we’ve all been in one! The editors discuss the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to book groups. 1. What sort of…
The Happy Tree by Rosalind Murray
Reviewed by Simon Thomas Devotees of Persephone Books will know that the best thing about this reprint house is bringing to light authors whose work has long lain unjustly neglected….
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Reviewed by Susan Osborne Set in 1977, Everything I Never Told You is the story of a family whose oldest daughter disappears one night. A few days later the police arrive with…
Someone by Alice McDermott
Paperback review by Victoria Alice McDermott is one of those writers who make you wonder how on earth they do it. Every sentence in her deceptively simple novel, Someone, is written with…
Playthings by Alex Pheby
Reviewed by Anne Goodwin “Nothing to be concerned about” Daniel Paul Schreber reassures himself in the opening paragraph of Alex Pheby’s second novel. Just an ordinary day in a middle-class…
Those Who Walk Away by Patricia Highsmith
Reviewed by Harriet. ‘The No.1 greatest crime writer’, proclaims The Times on the covers of Virago’s new reprints of some of Patricia Highsmith’s lesser known novels. That’s obviously a claim…
My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
Reviewed by Simon Slightly Foxed Editions often introduce me to books I know nothing about – hidden gems waiting to be unearthed – and that is wonderful. What they’ve done…