tmn The latest addition to my website is Tim Winton‘s Eyrie. While not his best, this is another fine novel from Winton. Tom Keely was a successful advocate for WildForce, an Australian environmental group that took on and beat businesses flouting environmental laws. But it all went sour, as did his marriage. He is now living … Read more
Last year we spent an enjoyable few days in Provence, so we headed back this year. This was more of an artistic trip than a literary one. Before going, we watched one of my favourite actors, Richard E Grant, giving an interesting introduction to the various artists who lived and worked on the Côte d’Azur. … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jun’ichiro Tanizaki‘s お艶殺し (A Spring-Time Case). This is the earliest of Tanizaki’s works to be translated into English, though the English text is very difficult to get hold of, having first been published in 1927 in Japan and never reprinted. This fairly short novel tells the story of … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sebastiano Vassalli‘s La notte della cometa (The Night of the Comet), surprisingly translated into English and, though out of print, readily available. This is a novelised biography of the Italian poet Dino Campana, a poète maudit. Vassalli has chosen to use the novel form rather than write a … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Marlene van Niekerk‘s Triomf (Triomf). This is a very funny novel about a poor white South African family, that is totally dysfunctional. They live in the suburb of Triomf, specially built for poor whites on top of a bulldozed black shantytown, Sophiatown. The Benade family consists of Mol, … Read more
I have now read all the novels on the Baileys Womens Prize for fiction shortlist. As a reminder, they are; Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Americanah Hannah Kent: Burial Rites Jhumpa Lahiri: The Lowland Audrey Magee: The Undertaking Eimear McBride: A Girl is a Half-formed Thing Donna Tartt: The Goldfinch Cutting straight to the chase, there is … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Eimear McBride‘s A Girl is a Half-formed Thing. McBride has been hailed as a genius for this novel and it has received quite a few positive reviews, though some less positive. I am afraid that I am in the latter camp. It is written in a stream of … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Hannah Kent‘s Burial Rites. Though Kent is Australian, this novel is set entirely in Iceland, where Kent spent some time. It tells the story, based on an actual historical incident, of the murder of two men at a remote farm. Three people have been arrested and found guilty … Read more
Well, I am glad someone said it. While I have quite enjoyed the two volumes of Karl Ove Knausgård‘s six-volume My Struggle, I have been somehwat baffled that Knausgård has been hailed as the next big thing, possible Nobel Prize winner, a Norwegian Proust or Proustian, if you prefer, or even a modern Proust. In … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Audrey Magee‘s The Undertaking, one of the books on the shortlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. This is Magee’s first novel and a fine novel it is. The hero is Peter Faber, a German soldier in World War II, who is fighting on the Russian front. He … Read more