Virginia Woolf in Manhattan by Maggie Gee
Reviewed by Simon Thomas I was very nervous about reading Virginia Woolf in Manhattan. I am an enormous Woolf fan, and was a bit scared about the crimes that might be…
Reviewed by Simon Thomas I was very nervous about reading Virginia Woolf in Manhattan. I am an enormous Woolf fan, and was a bit scared about the crimes that might be…
Reviewed by Ann Darnton Late last year I stumbled across London Falling, the first novel in Paul Cornell’s series of what might loosely – very loosely – be called police procedurals….
Translated from the Catalan by Julie Wark Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell This is the story of Gabriel Delacruz, orphan, international furniture remover, lover and father to four sons. Four boys –…
Review by Harriet Have you ever had the experience of finishing a book and feeling as if you will never find another one that remotely measures up? That’s how I…
Reviewed by Claire/The Captive Reader When I started blogging in early 2010, I had never heard of Angela Thirkell. Then, slowly, I started hearing whispers. A casual reference here and…
Translated by Clarissa Botsford Reviewed by Susan Osborne Reading fiction in translation offers us a glimpse into different worlds, cultures that we can never experience ourselves no matter how sophisticated modern…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine People who know and love Nicci French will know at once that this is the fourth outing into the world of Frieda Klein, that troubled, insomniac…
Reviewed by Andrew Blackman Follow your dreams. It’s a phrase beloved of self-help authors and motivational speakers, but what if you can only follow your dreams by hurting those closest…
Reviewed by Victoria Best I firmly believe you can never dismiss any genre of book or any particular fictional setting as not your cup of tea, because written the right…
Reviewed by Max Dunbar I first read House of Leaves as a teenager and fell in love with it: a grunge-emocore memory palace of a novel, about a suburban home, that gets…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine. “The world is ending,” she said. “The message has come from child to adult, child to adult, passed back down the generations from a thousand years…
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell Bethan Roberts’s fourth novel takes on one of the primal fears of all parents – that of someone abducting your child. Mother Island is not, however,…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine She was her father’s daughter. It was said of her from the beginning. For one thing, Alma Whittaker looked precisely like Henry: ginger of hair, florid…
Reviewed by Victoria Best Margaret Forster is one of those authors who have been steadily producing first class fiction for decades without ever getting much in the way of recognition…
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell I knew that Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat, had other literary strings to her bow, for a few years ago she published two volumes of fantasy for…
Reviewed by Danielle Simpson Johanna Lane’s debut novel, Black Lake, is the sort of story that creeps up on you. You don’t realize just how good it is until halfway through…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine Mom liked to celebrate the little things. Like finding a forgotten wrinkled dollar in a lint-ridden coat pocket, or when there was no line in the…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine At the beginning of the The Dead Beat, Martha Fluke is visiting her father’s grave in an Edinburgh cemetery. There was a bunch of yellow carnations at…
Translated by Mike Harakis Reviewed by Helen Parry The philosophy that a text is created by the reader as well as the writer is well known and widely shared these…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine Well, Sophie Hannah has done it again. Did anyone ever have such a fiendishly fertile and convoluted imagination? This is her ninth crime novel, and she…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine Jo Baker has had the brilliant idea of writing, not a sequel, but an account of what goes on below stairs in Pride and Prejudice. All the…
Reviewed by Ali Hope The Fairley family trilogy by Mary Hocking has remained among her most popular novels. They were among a small number of Hockings published by Virago in…
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell Jill Dawson’s eighth novel is certainly a tale with heart. At the centre of it is Professor and professional reprobate Patrick who, at fifty, is diagnosed…
Reviewed by Sakura Gooneratne Mahesh Rao’s debut novel, The Smoke is Rising, chronicles the daily lives of Susheela, Mala and Uma in Mysore, India; three women from very different backgrounds caught…