June 17, 2021 Barcelona Dreaming, by Rupert Thomson Review by Basil Ramsome-Davies Rupert Thomson has been around for quite a while, a prolific and much respected author; this is the first book…
June 17, 2021 Miss Browne’s Friend by F M Mayor Reviewed by Harriet Born in 1872, Flora Macdonald Mayor was the daughter of an Anglican clergyman and classics professor. Perhaps surprisingly, given her background,…
June 15, 2021 Things Remembered and Things Forgotten by Kyoko Nakajima Translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori and Ian MacDonald Review by Anna Hollingsworth In the short story The Last Obon, Satsuki is mistaken for the…
June 15, 2021 Rabbits by Terry Miles Review by Annabel As I sat down to start reading this book, a tweet pinged on my phone and I glanced over – someone…
June 10, 2021 Our Lady of the Nile by Scholastique Mukasonga Translated by Melanie Mauthner Review by Dorian Stuber The title of Scholastique Mukasonga’s Our Lady of the Nile refers to both a statue of…
June 10, 2021 At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop Translated by Anna Moschovakis Review by Tony Malone David Diop’s At Night All Blood Is Black takes the reader back to the battlefields of…
June 8, 2021 Painting Time by Maylis de Kerangal Translated by Jessica Moore Reviewed by Annabel Maylis de Kerangal is a novelist whose primary focus is not the characters that people her books,…
June 3, 2021 Civilisations by Laurent Binet Translated by Sam Taylor Review by Max Dunbar Reviewers of fiction, trying to make sense of Laurent Binet’s Civilisations, have reached for video game metaphors….
May 28, 2021 The Octopus Man by Jasper Gibson Review by Anne Goodwin Tom doesn’t expect life to be easy; it’s more important to follow a true path. Single, jobless and reliant on…
May 27, 2021 Mamma by Diana Tutton Reviewed by Harriet Published in 1956, Mamma was the first novel Tutton wrote, though her second and now better known Guard Your Daughters was…
May 25, 2021 Greenwich Park by Katherine Faulkner Review by Max Dunbar How the Other Half Lie There is a fabulous new genre in commercial fiction. I call it ‘Posh People Getting…
May 21, 2021 Mr Fortune’s Maggot by Sylvia Townsend Warner Reviewed by Harriet It can only be good news that Penguin have been reissuing Sylvia Townsend Warner’s admirable novels. I only discovered her writing…
May 20, 2021 The Assistant by Kjell Ola Dahl Translated by Don Bartlett Reviewed by Annabel Kjell Ola Dahl is one of Norway’s foremost crime writers, especially known for his ‘Oslo detectives’ series,…
May 18, 2021 Come Join Our Disease by Sam Byers Reviewed by Dan Lipscombe Sam Byers is a wonderfully talented author. His imagination and wordplay seemingly know no bounds. However, when you want to…
May 18, 2021 King Arthur’s Death by Michael Smith Reviewed by Rob Spence Last year, I reviewed Michael Smith’s excellent new version of the Middle English Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. He…
May 6, 2021 Featherweight by Mick Kitson Reviewed by Lory Widmer Hess “A woman has to fight sometimes. It’s as well ya know how.” Annie Loveridge is a fighting woman, and…
May 4, 2021 Sistersong by Lucy Holland Reviewed by Annabel Lucy Holland’s impeccably researched novel combines the story of a 19th Century murder ballad, ‘The Two Sisters’ with Dark Ages post-Arthurian…
April 29, 2021 The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox Reviewed by Max Dunbar In Lords and Ladies, his Faerie novel, Terry Pratchett quotes an old folk rhyme: My mother said I never shouldPlay…
April 27, 2021 A Rage in Harlem and The Real Cool Killers by Chester Himes Reviewed by Annabel I first discovered the mad world of Chester Himes’s Harlem in an old Allison & Busby paperback of The Crazy Kill,…
April 27, 2021 A Theatre For Dreamers by Polly Samson Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Tired of lockdown, hankering to see new places, and in desperate need of some sun: that describes most of us…
April 22, 2021 A Virtual Image by Rosalind Brackenbury Reviewed by Helen Parry Until Michael Walmer reissued her first novel, A Day to Remember to Forget, I had never heard of Rosalind Brackenbury….
April 22, 2021 There’s No Story There – Wartime Writing, 1944-1945 by Inez Holden Reviewed by Hayley Anderton This is one of two recent releases from Handheld Press that cover aspects of wartime experience – in this case…
April 20, 2021 The Immortals of Tehran by Ali Araghi Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth Who hasn’t thought of poets as semi-mythical, Byron-like figures, with access to otherworldly visions? The truth is, most of the…
April 20, 2021 Diary of a Film by Niven Govinden Reviewed by Annabel Diary of a Film follows a few days in the life of an auteur film director who is in Italy with…
April 13, 2021 King of Rabbits by Karla Neblett Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth Imagine a teenager who skips school, smokes, drinks and disappears from his girlfriend on a regular basis; a young man…
