August 4, 2020 Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir by Natasha Trethewey Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Natasha Trethewey is an English professor and former U.S. Poet Laureate familiar to me from Native Guard (2006), her third…
July 2, 2020 Diary of a Young Naturalist by Dara McAnulty Reviewed by Rebecca Foster When the Wainwright Prize longlists (for writing on UK nature and global conservation themes) were announced in early June, Dara…
June 2, 2020 Greenery: Journeys in Springtime by Tim Dee (2020) Review by Rebecca Foster From the Cape of Good Hope to the Arctic Circle, Dee tracks the spring as it travels north. From first…
May 14, 2020 The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Evie Wyld’s third novel has the most stunning opening I’ve encountered in a long time. In under a page and…
April 16, 2020 Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild by Lucy Jones Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Back in early March, just before literary events started being cancelled due to coronavirus, I had the good fortune to…
February 20, 2020 Snow, Dog, Foot by Claudio Morandini Translated by J. Ockenden Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Who could resist the title of this Italian bestseller? A black comedy about a hermit in…
August 13, 2019 Irreplaceable: The Fight to Save Our Wild Places by Julian Hoffman Reviewed by Rebecca Foster More so than ever, I’m convinced that the purpose of literature is to educate us about the most pressing issues…
July 16, 2019 City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert Reviewed by Rebecca Foster It’s been six years since Elizabeth Gilbert’s last work of fiction, The Signature of All Things, (reviewed here), a warm,…
May 28, 2019 Doggerland by Ben Smith Reviewed by Rebecca Foster There’s no sign of a decline in the popularity of dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction. If anything, it’s becoming even more…
May 21, 2019 The Way Home: Tales from a life without technology by Mark Boyle Reviewed by Rebecca Foster It’s common practice nowadays, when publicizing a book review published in an online venue, to tag the author on social…
April 4, 2019 A Spotlight on the Wellcome Book Prize By Rebecca Foster Celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, the Wellcome Book Prize is an annual award sponsored by the Wellcome Trust, a global…
March 26, 2019 War Doctor: Surgery on the Front Line by David Nott Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Looking out from my inconsequential life, I’m often envious of people who save lives on a regular basis – doctors,…
November 27, 2018 Nine Pints: A Journey through the Mysterious, Miraculous World of Blood by Rose George Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Rose George is the author of three previous wide-ranging nonfiction books, about refugees, human waste and foreign shipping. In Nine…
November 20, 2018 Under the Rock: The Poetry of a Place by Benjamin Myers Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Benjamin Myers has been having a bit of a moment. In 2017 Bluemoose Books published his fifth novel, The Gallows…
September 20, 2018 Mrs Gaskell & Me: Two Women, Two Love Stories, Two Centuries Apart By Nell Stevens Reviewed by Rebecca Foster It started with a misreading of some nineteenth-century handwriting. In 2013 Nell Stevens began a PhD at King’s College, London….
September 11, 2018 The Immeasurable World: Journeys in Desert Places by William Atkins Reviewed by Rebecca Foster When I saw him introduce The Immeasurable World as part of the Faber Spring Party, William Atkins characterised it as…
April 26, 2018 All the Beautiful Girls by Elizabeth J Church Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Elizabeth J. Church’s debut novel, The Atomic Weight of Love, was about an 87-year-old amateur ornithologist whose husband was one…
February 22, 2018 From Here to Eternity: Travelling the World to Find the Good Death by Caitlin Doughty Reviewed by Rebecca Foster If you’ve read thirtysomething California funeral director Caitlin Doughty’s previous book, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, you’ll remember her account…
September 5, 2017 Admissions by Henry Marsh Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Brain surgeon Henry Marsh’s first book, Do No Harm, was one of my favorite reads of 2015 [reviewed by Annabel here]. In short,…
August 17, 2017 What it Means When a Man Falls from the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Born in the UK, raised largely in Nigeria, and now resident in Minneapolis, USA – Africa and the West are…
March 23, 2017 Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn Reviewed by Rebecca Foster From the title and the Montego Bay, Jamaica setting, you might be expecting a story line light enough to match…
June 28, 2016 The Abundance by Annie Dillard Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Annie Dillard is one of those uncategorisable writers who poke fingers into all sorts of genres. Like Adam Gopnik, Rebecca…
June 17, 2016 The Sellout by Paul Beatty Reviewed by Rebecca Foster The Sellout, Paul Beatty’s fourth novel, is such an outrageous racial satire that I kept asking myself how he got…
June 7, 2016 My Son, My Son by Howard Spring Reviewed by Rebecca Foster This is the second gem I’ve read from Head of Zeus’s new imprint, Apollo. Like Josephine Johnson’s Now in November, which…
June 6, 2016 Shiny New Author: Stephanie Danler Questions by Rebecca Foster 1. Readers learn so few facts about Tess – even her name and where she’s from are not revealed until…
