The latest addition to my website is Ellis Sharp‘s Pig Tale. This is a very witty book, damning human foibles, told from the point of view of a five year old boar (i.e. male pig) called Ed. Ed manages to escape from the pig farm and we follow his adventures (which are being recounted to … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ellis Sharp‘s Month of the Drowned Dog. This is a decidedly postmodern novel, as we might expect from Sharp. Sharp, the author, tells of a character known only as the writer who had written a book which he had abandoned and is now returning to. We get (more … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jonathan Coe‘s Bournville. This might be described as a state of the nation novel, as we follow an extended family from VE Day to the present day and the covid pandemic. The main character is Mary Lamb, based on Coe’s mother as he tells us in the afterword, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ian McEwan‘s Lessons. This is McEwan’s longest novel and tells the story of Roland Baines, his friends and family from World War II to the present day, Baines is clearly based in part on Mc Ewan himself but only in part. The basic theme is that we are … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ellis Sharp‘s Alice in Venice. Alice Short is on holiday in Venice to visit the varioius sites where the film Don’t Look Now was filmed. She meets – maybe -a Frenchman called Alain who may be drug dealer, an assassin or an academic specialising in Henry Fielding or … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Robert Irwin‘s The Limits of Vision. Marcia is an English housewife seemingly obsessed with cleanliness. When her vacuum cleaner breaks down, just before her coffee morning guests arrive, she is confronted by Mucor the Fungus, the spokesperson for dirt. Once her guests arrive, admiring the Dutch painting of … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Adelle Stripe & Lias Saoudi‘s Ten Thousand Apologies: Fat White Family and the Miracle of Failure. This book is a fictional biography and an alternative version of historic events about Fat White Family, a contemporary English rock/punk band. The book is told in the third person (presumably by … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Robert Irwin‘s The Runes Have Been Cast. This is a very funny spoof campus novel/spoof ghost story, set in the early 1960s. Two Oxford University English lit students have been asked to write on the Victorian ghost story, and this gives us a lead-in to many references to … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ellis Sharp‘s Twenty-Twenty. This is a diary, influenced by Uwe Johnson‘s Jahrestage (Anniversaries), which he reads and comments on, in the early part of the book. We follow the author – he simply calls himself Ellis – both in his daily activities – shopping,looking after his young daughter, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sarah Hall‘s Burntcoat. Our heroine is Edith Harknesss. We follow her life from when she was ten and her mother, a successful novelist, had an aneurysm but survived though much changed. Edith decides to become an artist, focussing on monumental works using shou sugi ban, a Japanese charred … Read more