The picture on the left is Mount Cook, the tallest mountain in New Zealand, where I am at the moment. Purely by chance the book I am reading is Paolo Cognetti’s Otto Montagne, to be published in English in March as Eight Mountains. The novel won the Italian Strega Prize and, as the title tells … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Anna Smaill‘s The Chimes. I have been sitting on this for several months but am inspired to read it as it made The Man Booker longlist and, as I have only read two others on the list (both, interestingly enough, by women), I felt that I should get … Read more
I have just returned from four weeks in New Zealand. There were two reasons for going. The first, of course, was to escape the English January weather, though this plan has not always proved to be entirely successful, as it was snowing when we returned. The second was because we very much like New Zealand … Read more
With Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries winning the ManBooker Prize, I must apologise to Jim Crace and Ruth Ozeki, as I predicted that Crace would win and Ozeki should win, a curse that doomed both of them. Nevertheless, congratulations to Eleanor Catton. Her novel is a very fine one and I am convinced that she will … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Eleanor Catton‘s The Luminaries. It is on this year’s Man Booker longlist. Despite weighing in at 830 pages, it is not the longest book on the longlist (that honour goes to Richard House’s The Kills). I was particularly impressed with Catton’s first book, Rehearsal. However, while enjoying this … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Eleanor Catton‘s Rehearsal. This is a superb debut novel about performance and imagined performance, about the power of gossip and power in relationships, about who we really we are and who we think we are and about how the younger generation is changing, presumably in New Zealand though … Read more
I haven’t posted for a while as I have been on holiday to New Zealand. See obligatory pictures of Milford Sound and a kaka bird below. The purpose of the holiday was just that – a holiday to see the beauties of New Zealand which, I must say, were well worth the very long journey. … Read more