The End We Start From by Megan Hunter
Reviewed by Lucy Unwin The first thing to say about The End We Start From is it’s not a standard book of fictional prose. The story is told through beautifully-crafted sentences, isolated…
Q&A with Anne Sebba, author of Les Parisiennes
Helen: Hello Anne! Let me first say that I was bowled over by Les Parisiennes – it’s a real tour de force of narrative history, totally absorbing and allowing the…
My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier
Reviewed by Rachel Fenn I was delighted to have the opportunity to revisit a novel that has long haunted me. Despite the effect it had on me the first time,…
Miraculous Mysteries edited by Martin Edwards
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton Locked room murders and other similarly impossible crimes are one of the sub genres I particularly enjoy in golden age, and older, mysteries so I was…
Five Fascinating Facts about… Arnold Bennett
Compiled by Julie Barham 1.Bennett was an ardent Francophile, frequently looking to France as a source of literary inspiration. He would moor his yacht and paint views from peaceful French…
Clayhanger by Arnold Bennett
Review by Julie Barham Vintage books have produced a new edition of possibly the best known of Bennett’s novels featuring the story of Edwin Clayhanger. It is very much more…
Abigail’s Party by Mike Leigh
Review by Annabel ‘Little top-up?’ Ever since Alison Steadman playing Beverly uttered those words when Abigail’s Party aired on TV in 1977, they entered into the vernacular of my family….
The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington by Joanna Moorhead
Reviewed by Karen Langley This year is the centenary of the birth of author and artist Leonora Carrington, and we’re being treated to a wonderful array of issues and reissues…
The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden
Review by Annabel There is something about stories based upon Russian fairy tales that so appeals. Some authors, as Eowyn Ivey did with her divine debut, The Snow Child, translated…
Murder on the Pilgrims Way by Julie Wassmer
Reviewed by Victoria If you are like me and enjoy the format of traditional cosy crime – an atmospheric setting, a great cast of possible suspects, a second body that…
Belladonna by Daša Drndić
Translated by Celia Hawkesworth Reviewed by Basil Ransome Davies There can be no quick digest of this book, marketed as a novel though in fact much more, and no doubt…
Hamlet: Globe to Globe by Dominic Dromgoole
Reviewed by Harriet Dominic Dromgoole was the Artistic Director of London’s Globe Theatre from 2005 to 2016. During this successful period he initiated many memorable achievements, including a 2012 festival…
The Devil and Webster by Jean Hanff Korelitz
Reviewed by Harriet I’d never heard of Jean Hanff Korelitz when her 2014 novel, You Should Have Known, landed unsolicited in my mailbox. I read it with huge admiration and…
Q&A with Emma Henderson about ‘The Valentine House’
Questions by Annabel Annabel: Taking the cog railway up the mountain and then a hike from the station brings back happy memories for me of summer holidays at Caux on the…
The Valentine House by Emma Henderson
Reviewed by Annabel Here they come. Here they are. Les anglais, the English, les rosbifs. After a rather attention-grabbling opening, in which the ageing Sir Anthony Valentine writes some extremely…
Birdcage Walk by Helen Dunmore
Reviewed by Harriet I wanted to write about people whose voices have not echoed through time and whose struggles and passions have been hidden from history So writes Helen Dunmore…
Tom Tiddler’s Ground by Ursula Orange
Reviewed by Simon One of the authors I’ve been on the look-out for, for years, is Ursula Orange – entirely the responsibility of Scott (from the Furrowed Middlebrow blog) who…
David Jones: Engraver, Soldier, Painter, Poet by Thomas Dilworth
Review by Rob Spence Ask a reasonably well-educated person to name some Anglophone modernist poets, and you are sure to hear the names of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Mention…
Foxes Unearthed: A story of love and loathing in modern Britain by Lucy Jones
Review by Hayley Anderton Where I live – middle of a city, no garden, bins inside, and nobody feeding them, foxes are a delight to see. They seem generally indifferent…
How to Be Human by Paula Cocozza
Reviewed by Alice Farrant At 35, Mary is single and living in the house she once shared with her partner. She goes to work only to be berated by her…
Mikhail and Margarita by Julie Lekstrom Himes
Review by Karen Langley In this centenary year of the Russian Revolution, much attention is being focused on Soviet Russia and its culture. One author who exerts an eternal fascination…
Rain: Four Walks in English Weather by Melissa Harrison
Reviewed by Rob Spence I come from Manchester, so I know about rain. Actually, Manchester’s reputation as the rainy city is, as I am overfond of pointing out, a result…
A House in Flanders, by Michael Jenkins
Reviewed by Helen Parry In the extreme northern part of France lies the plain of Flanders, a great fertile expanse rolling inland from the sea until it meets a chain…
Gone: A Girl, a Violin, and a Life Unstrung by Min Kym
Reviewed by Harriet For some reason I’ve always been fascinated by child prodigies – people who seem to have been born with an innate talent for something, which very often…