Ali Smith: The Accidental

The latest addition to my website is Ali Smith‘s The Accidental. This takes as its theme a partially dysfunctional family: mother, two children, father (second marriage) who are disrupted by the arrival of a stranger out of the blue who changes them all in various ways, both when she is there and after she has … Read more

Miklós Szentkuthy: Eszkoriál [Escorial]

The latest addition to my website is Miklós Szentkuthy‘s Eszkoriál [Escorial]. This book follows the life of Francis Borgia, descendant of those Borgias, later Director-General of the Society of Jesus and canonised nearly a hundred years after his death. He had a colourful life and Szentkuthy inevitably makes it more colourful, while being critical of … Read more

Richard Powers: The Overstory

The latest addition to my website is Richard Powers‘ The Overstory. This is another first-class, long and complex novel from Powers. Its subject is trees, particularly the idea that trees are, to some degree, sentient, rational beings and the fact that trees are being chopped down in unprecedented numbers in the United States and elsewhere, … Read more

Jorge Barón Biza: El desierto y su semilla (The Desert and Its Seed)

The latest addition to my website is Jorge Barón Biza‘s El desierto y su semilla (The Desert and Its Seed). This is a thinly disguised autobiographical novel, telling of the grim events that happened in the author’s family. Barón Biza’s father threw acid in the face of his wife (while they were discussing divorce with … Read more