The latest addition to my website is Donna Tartt‘s The Goldfinch, her third novel in twenty-one years. This one is another large novel – 800 pages – with undertones of violence and a fantastic read. It has been criticised by some for being a Harry Potter for adults but that is, in my view, a … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Thomas Pynchon‘s Bleeding Edge. This novel continues with Pynchon’s obsession with conspiracies within conspiracies within conspiracies. It is set at the turn of the millennium, so includes conspiracies about 9/11 and, as you can imagine, it is not Al-Qaida who gets the blame. It tells the story of … Read more
The latest additions to my website are two books by Ruth Ozeki. The first is My Year of Meats, a very witty and somewhat polemic attack on various things – sexism, racism, the US obsession with guns and, in particular, the meat industry. It tells two stories of two women in parallel. The first, clearly … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Joanna Scott‘s Follow Me. This is another first-class novel from Scott, telling the story of Sally Werner (she has several pseudonyms), a woman from near the fictitious Tuskee River in Northern Pennsylvania, born of religious German parents, who does not fit in with her parents’ and siblings’ way … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Joanna Scott‘s The Manikin. This is another superb novel from Joanna Scott. It is primarily set in a remote house in upstate New York called the Manikin (the name for the framework used to build anatomical models). The late owner, Henry Craxton, made his fortune out of selling … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Joanna Scott‘s Arrogance, another superb novel by Scott, this one being about the Austrian artist Egon Schiele, who died aged twenty-eight during the influenza pandemic at the end of World War I. Schiele was not a man to observe conventional morality and was in trouble with local communities … Read more
The latest addition to my website is A. M. Homes‘ Jack, her first novel. It is certainly an enjoyable novel, though the humour is not nearly as black as her recent prize-winning May We Be Forgiven. Jack, the hero/narrator, is a fifteen-year old boy, whose parents get divorced and who subsequently discovers that the reason … Read more
The latest addition to my website is A. M. Homes‘ May We Be Forgiven, the winner of the 2013 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Most people, including me, thought that Bring Up the Bodies would win and were quite surprised that this novel won. While I very much enjoyed Bring Up the Bodies, I think May … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Joanna Scott‘s The Closest Possible Union. The novel is set almost entirely on a slave ship and tells the story of Tom Beauchamp, a fourteen-year old boy, son of the owner of the ship (though this is known only to the captain and first mate), his fears and … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Joanna Scott‘s Fading, My Parmacheene Belle, the author’s first novel. Joanna Scott is one of those authors who writes very intelligent novels but somehow seems to get lost in the shuffle. This book, for example, is out of print. It is part fable, part extended fishing metaphor, part … Read more