Jonathan Coe‘s novels apparently sell better in France. Coe claims that British people can see how current politics is impacting on the country every day in the papers and on TV rather than look for it in his novels. Ignoring his rather dubious grammar, I would argue that Coe is one of those English writers … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Rupert Thomson‘s Katherine Carlyle. Thomson’s novels tend to be dark and are often concerned with people trying to escape. This one is no exception. The eponymous heroine is nineteen years old. She lives with her father in Rome though he is usually absent, as he is a war … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Irenosen Okojie‘s Butterfly Fish. This is a very accomplished and colourful debut novel by a Nigerian-born English writer. It tells the story of Joy Lowon, an English woman of Nigerian origin, while, at the same time, the story of Adeusa, eighth wife of the ruler of Benin (nothing … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Kazuo Ishiguro‘s The Buried Giant. This book has received a lot of criticism, not least because it is major departure for Ishiguro as it is, to all intents and purposes, a Lord of the Rings/Arthurian legend-style fantasy. Set in the fifth/sixth century, it tells of the quest of … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Geoff Nicholson‘s The City Under the Skin. I notice that this is the sixteenth novel by Nicholson I have read and I can safely say that I have enjoyed them all. This follows the usual Nicholson pattern – a mysterious plot with twists and twists within twists, the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ian McEwan‘s The Children Act. This novel did not make the Man Booker 20124 longlist and, while it certainly is not a bad book, it is not McEwan back to his old form. It tells the story of Fiona Maye, a High Court judge in the Family Division, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is David Mitchell‘s The Bone Clocks. While this did make the Man Booker 2014 longlist, it surprisingly did not make the shortlist. I suspect that the fantasy elements in the book, which at times come close to being Dan Brown-ish, may have put off some of the judges, as … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Marina Warner‘s The Leto Bundle. This is a superb novel about identity, refugees, immigration, religion, the effect of war and political upheaval, particularly on women, as well, of course, as we would expect from Marina Warner, about myth and its role both in the past and for us … Read more
We spent the past week in the North of England, partially for family reasons but we also made a few literary jaunts. I have always wanted to visit Newstead Abbey so we stopped off there on the way up. Newstead Abbey was never an abbey but a priory. Following the dissolution of the monasteries under … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Marina Warner‘s Indigo. This novel is loosely (at times very loosely) based on the plot of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. There are two stories being told, both concerning the fictitious Caribbean country of Enfant-Béate. The first starts just before the British take over the country. We follow Sycorax (a … Read more