Books for Spring: A Reading List
Selected by Danielle Simpson The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim Any list of spring reading surely must begin with Elizabeth von Arnim’s The Enchanted April. It begins one dreary April day in…
The Book of Margery Kempe
Translated by Anthony Bale Reviewed by Harriet Margery Kempe (c.1373-after 1439) was an extraordinary woman, and this is an extraordinary book. It’s often referred to as the first autobiography to…
The Youngest Lady in Waiting by Mara Kay
Reviewed by Elaine Simpson-Long In Mara Kay’s first book, Masha, we followed the adventures of Masha Fredericks as she travelled to St Petersburg from her home in the country to attend…
Reading in Translation
By Jean Morris The right words will come to me, because I am now translating from the heart, not from the head.Maureen Freely One of my favourite reviewers remarked a…
A War of Flowers by Jane Thynne
Reviewed by Elaine Simpson-Long This is the third in a series of books featuring Clara Vine, a film actress in pre-war Berlin. If you have not read the earlier titles Black…
The Well by Catherine Chanter
Reviewed by Eleanor Franzén Speculative fiction often works best when it takes one element of our everyday lives and tweaks it, showing us how much we rely on a certain…
Interview with Jane Thynne on her Clara Vine Novels
Interview by Annabel A: Firstly, congratulations on A War of Flowers! It took the life and career of Clara Vine (Anglo-German film actress and British spy) to new and ever more thrilling…
Portrait Inside My Head by Phillip Lopate
Reviewed by Victoria Readers may recognise Phillip Lopate’s name from the anthologies of American essay writing for which he is the editor, though in fact he is a prolific essay…
An Interview with Phillip Lopate
Interview by Ingrid Wassenaar 1. Phillip, how did you come to essay writing? I came to essays through fiction. When I was starting out, I loved Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, or…
Shotgun Lovesongs by Nickolas Butler
Review by Susan Osborne I hope you’ll excuse me if this review reads more like a pean of praise – or even a gush – than a hard-nosed critque: Nickolas…
A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale
Review by Susan Osborne It’s nearly thirty years since the publication of Patrick Gale’s first novel, The Aerodynamics of Pork, and for much of that time he was relatively unknown. Richard…
The Nuns of Sant’ Ambrogio by Hubert Wolf
Translated by Ruth Martin Reviewed by Harriet This is certainly an extraordinary and fascinating book. Written by a celebrated German papal historian, it manages to combine highly academic ecclesiastical history…
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
Reviewed by Annabel Unless you live in a hole in the ground (more of that later), it can’t have escaped your attention that Kazuo Ishiguro has…
Spotlight on Publishers: British Library Crime Classics
By Robert Davies The British Library is younger than you might think for such an august institution – it was only established with a split from the British Museum in…
Billie by Anna Gavalda
Translated by Jennifer Rappaport Reviewed by Harriet Anna Gavalda is a greatly admired novelist in her native France. All her books have been bestsellers and one, Ensemble, c’est tout (rather curiously retitled Hunting…
Capital Crimes: London Mysteries, edited by Martin Edwards
Reviewed by Harriet The relation between Douglas Stone and the notorious Lady Sannox was very well known both among the fashionable circles of which she was a brilliant member, and…
Kolymsky Heights by Lionel Davidson
Reviewed by Harriet I must admit that I’d never heard of Lionel Davidson before this novel came my way. I now know him to have been a celebrated writer of…
The Pink Suit by Nicole Mary Kelby
Paperback review by Susan Osborne Please don’t be put off by the Barbie-pink jacket adorning the paperback edition of Nicole Mary Kelby’s novel. It isn’t a sickly sweet, girly read…
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…
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…