The latest addition to my website is Rupert Thomson‘s latest novel Secrecy. Unusually for Thomson, it is set in the past – seventeenth century Florence – and involves several real people, including the main character Gaetano Zummo, who made sculptures out of wax, particularly ones showing decomposing bodies. Zummo comes to work for Grand Duke … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Chinghiz Gusseinov‘s Магомед, Мамед, Мамиш (Mahomet, Mahmed, Mamish), an Azerbaijani novel, the first one from that country on my website. While certainly not a great novel, it is is certainly very enjoyable, telling the story of a rumbunctious family in Baku who both stick closely together while not … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Emyr Humphreys‘ Outside the House of Baal. This is what Humphreys calls a long novel,not only in number of words but also because it covers a long(-ish) time span, namely from the early twentieth century to the 1960s. It tells the story of two families who see many … Read more
The latest addition to my website is François Mauriac‘s Thérèse Desqueyroux (Therese; later: Therese Desqueyroux). This is unusual for Mauriac, in that the heroine has committed a criminal act – she has tried to poison her husband. The books starts with her leaving the court, with her father and lawyer, as her husband has perjured … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Kate Atkinson‘s Life After Life. This is a wonderful novel, a sort of cross between Ken Grimwood’s Replay and the film Groundhog Day. Ursula Todd is still-born, the umbilical cord strangling her. She is immediately born again and this time the umbilical cord does not strangle her. She … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Esther Tusquets‘ Para no volver (Never to Return). This is a first-class novel by one of the leading Spanish women novelists, who sadly died last year. She seems to be relatively unknown in the English-speaking world, despite the fact that several of her books, including this one, have … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sasha Sokolov‘s Школа для дураков (A School for Fools). Sokolov did not even try to publish this novel in the Soviet Union in the mid-1970s and it was first published in Russian in the United States. It is easy to see why the Soviet Union would not allow … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Emyr Humphreys‘ A Toy Epic. It is a relatively short novel that tells the story of three boys in 1930s Wales who know one another but who come from different backgrounds. It is told through the thoughts and points of view of each of the boys as they … Read more
The latest addition to my website is François Mauriac‘s Le Désert de l’amour (The Desert of Love). While it does have Mauriac’s trademark doom and gloom, it also has a (very slight) glimmer of hope at the end. However, before we get to the end, we learn of the desert of love in the life … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Luigi Malerba‘s Il protagonista [The Protagonist]. This is a novel narrated by a penis. It is not the first novel featuring a penis by a major twentieth century Italian novelist. Alberto Moravia wrote a novel called Io e Lui, published in the US as Two: A Phallic Novel … Read more