The latest addition to my website is Hugh Lupton‘s The Ballad of John Clare. Hugh Lupton is a professional story-teller and, in his only novel, tells the tale of one year (1811-1812) in the life of nature poet John Clare. Clare came from a poor agricultural labouring background and we see him doing a variety … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Robert Irwin‘s Tom’s Version. This is a sort of follow-up to his previous book The Runes Have Been Cast but it stands on its own. The eponymous Tom meets Molly at an encounter group. Tom is an Irish would-be poet warehouse manager and somewhat naive. He gets unwittingly … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Rupert Thomson‘s Dartmouth Park. Our narrator is Philip Notman, a fifty-something historian. At the beginning of the book he is attending a conference in Bergen, where he meets a fellow and younger academic, Inés. There is a spark but nothing happens. However on the way home he has … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Rosemary Tonks‘ The Halt during the Chase. This novel wittily tells the story of a few eccentric characters in the London suburb of Hampstead in 1979. Our heroine/narrator is the thirty-one year old Sophie who has a decidedly ambiguous relationship with both her widowed mother and her not-quite … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Patrick Langley‘s The Variations. The book tells the story of people affected with the gift and the Agnes’s Hospice for Acoustically Gifted Children, which cares for them. The gift means that they can commune with the dead and are attuned to musical resonances (and are often talented musicians). However … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Rosemary Tonks‘s The Bloater. This is a quirky comedy of manners. The heroine/narrator is Min who is married to George, with whom she hardly seems to have any contact. She is pursued by a much older man whom she prefers to keep as a friend and, during the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Patrick Langley‘s Arkady. This is a dystopian novel in a country that is much like Britain. Indeed, it was published five years ago and is looking more prescient today. Two young boys – Jackson and Frank – are on holiday in Spain with their parents. Their mother disappears … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Chris McCabe‘s Dedalus. McCabe is a modern poet but he has written a novel which is a homage to James Joyce, a sequel to Joyce’s Ulysses and a fascinating work in its own right. This post is being written on 16 June, Bloomsday, the day on which (in … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Eric Lane‘s Dante Alighieri’s Publishing Company. This book is a witty and colourful account of how Eric Lane, publisher of Dedalus Books, founded and ran Dedalus Books with the help of a few friends and his wife. He had been attending a novel-writing evening class and considered what … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ellis Sharp‘s Concrete Impressions. This is a wickedly funny post-modern satire, bashing non-post-modern novelists, politicians, the upwardly mobile rich, Zionists, the media, the United States and the Establishment. It tells of Mick Owen, the greatest writer of his generation. He is clearly an amalgam of the likes of … Read more