December 17, 2020 The Stubborn Light of Things by Melissa Harrison & The Consolation of Nature by Michael McCarthy, Jeremy Mynott & Peter Marren By Rebecca Foster The Stubborn Light of Things collects five and a half years’ worth of Melissa Harrison’s monthly Nature Notebook columns for The…
December 15, 2020 Artifact by Arlene Heyman Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Lottie (or Dr Charlotte Kristin Hart Levinson, to give her full name), the protagonist of 77-year-old New York City psychiatrist…
December 10, 2020 Dearly by Margaret Atwood & other poetry highlights of 2020 By Rebecca Foster Dearly by Margaret Atwood In her career of more than five decades, Margaret Atwood has produced work in an astounding range…
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 28, 2020 Three Wainwright Prize Nominees: Books by Patrick Barkham, Patrick Laurie & Jini Reddy Reviewed by Rebecca Foster The Wainwright Prize longlists for writing on UK nature and global conservation themes were announced in early June and will…
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…
December 7, 2017 Fame is the Spur by Howard Spring Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Fame Is the Spur (originally published in 1940) is the second out-of-print Howard Spring novel reissued by Head of Zeus’s…
November 30, 2017 An Odyssey: A Father, a Son and an Epic by Daniel Mendelsohn Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Daniel Mendelsohn chairs the Humanities department at Bard College, where he was previously a Classics professor. He is the author…
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,…
