The latest addition to my website is J. G. Farrell‘s The Singapore Grip. This is the third, final and by far the longest of Farrell’s Empire trilogy. As the title tells us, it is set in Singapore and we follow events, from a British perspective, leading up to the Japanese invasion in 1942. We particularly … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Glen James Brown‘s Ironopolis. This is a superb first novel, set in a sink estate in the North of England. We follow seven main characters (and a host of others) as they struggle with their lives – drugs, failed relationships, the regeneration of the estate, violence. However, Brown … Read more
The latest addition to my website is J. G. Farrell‘s The Siege of Krishnapur, the second novel in Farrell’s post-colonial Empire trilogy. This one is based on the Siege of Lucknow of 1857, part of the Indian Rebellion against British occupation. The British seem intent on bringing civilisation to the Indians but the Indians do … Read more
This weekend we eventually got round to visiting St Ives to see Virginia Woolf An Exhibition Inspired by Her Writings at the Tate. Before discussing the exhibition, a few words about Virginia Woolf and St Ives. The Stephen family (Virginia Woolf’s parents, her brother and sister and herself) spent their summer holidays there, in Talland … Read more
The latest addition to my website is J. G. Farrell‘s Troubles. This novel, which won the Lost Man Booker Prize more than thirty years after the author’s death, is the first in Farrell’s acclaimed Empire Trilogy. It is set in the crumbling Majestic Hotel, a symbol of the decaying British Empire, located in County Wexford … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Geoff Nicholson‘s The Miranda. I have read all of Nicholson’s novels but this one is somewhat different from the others, less quirky, less funny, less English and much darker. Joe Johnson, our narrator, is a retired torturer. He is engaged by a shadowy, presumably US government organisation (the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Fiona Mozley‘s Elmet. There have been a lot of interesting novels coming out recently from young British women. I recently read Adelle Stripe‘s excellent Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile, and here is another first-class novel set in Yorkshire. This novel surprised everybody by being nominated for the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Adelle Stripe‘s Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile. This is Stripe’s first novel though she has been writing poetry for many years. It it a fictionalised biography of Andrea Dunbar, a young playwright who grew up on a poor estate in Bradford, Yorkshire, and died aged twenty-nine, from … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Naomi Alderman‘s The Power, winner of 2017 Women’s Prize for Fiction. It was the first science fiction novel to win the Women’s Prize. Most of the novel is set in the near future (or an alternative present) and takes as its premise that women (primarily younger women) acquire … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sarah Hall‘s The Wolf Border. This is another superb novel from Sarah Hall and it is, of course, about wolves. Rachel Caine works with wolves on the Nez Perce reservation. She is around forty and single, though she has had many a casual affairs, just as her mother … Read more