May 12, 2022 Maternal Mental Health Awareness Month: Birth Notes by Jessica Cornwell & After the Storm by Emma Jane Unsworth Reviewed by Rebecca Foster May is Maternal Mental Health Awareness Month and so the perfect time to consider two memoirs of postnatal depression, one…
March 3, 2022 Two short, watery novels: Tides by Sara Freeman & The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka By Rebecca Foster Short novels can convey much truth in a low page count, ramping up the psychological intensity through pared-back scenes and a…
February 8, 2022 Everything is True: A Junior Doctor’s Story of Life, Death and Grief in a Time of Pandemic, by Roopa Farooki Reviewed by Rebecca Foster I don’t know about you, but I can’t get enough of Covid-19 chronicles. My favourites of the twenty-some I’ve read…
December 7, 2021 Everybody: A Book About Freedom by olivia laing Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Olivia Laing has established herself as a group biographer par excellence, taking as her subjects alcoholic writers for the superb…
November 9, 2021 Orchard: A Year in England’s Eden by Benedict Macdonald & Nicholas Gates Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Bristol friends and BBC colleagues Ben Macdonald and Nick Gates set out to chronicle a year in the life of…
October 12, 2021 Golem Girl: A Memoir by Riva Lehrer Reviewed by Rebecca Foster In February, the inaugural Barbellion Prize was awarded to Golem Girl, visual artist Riva Lehrer’s account of growing up with…
September 28, 2021 Two nature memoirs set in the New Forest: Goshawk Summer by James Aldred & The Circling Sky by Neil Ansell By Rebecca Foster Two recent memoirs have shone a spotlight on the fauna and management strategies of the New Forest, a place my Hampshire-raised…
June 22, 2021 Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld Paperback review by Rebecca Foster Curtis Sittenfeld’s sixth novel, a work of alternative history narrated entirely by Hillary Rodham and covering the years between…
April 27, 2021 A Theatre For Dreamers by Polly Samson Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Tired of lockdown, hankering to see new places, and in desperate need of some sun: that describes most of us…
March 25, 2021 Notes From Deep Time: A journey through our past and future worlds by Helen Gordon Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Deep time has been a persistent theme in British nonfiction over the last couple of years, showing up in books…
February 16, 2021 Writers & Lovers by Lily King Paperback review by Rebecca Foster I almost passed on the chance to read this because I’d gotten the impression that it was nothing more…
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…
