The latest addition to my website is Inês Pedrosa‘s Fazes-me Falta [I Miss You]. This is a superb novel, which consists entirely of fifty small chapters, divided into two. The first part of the chapter is a woman talking, the second part a man talking. It soon becomes apparent that they are former lovers and … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sophie Cooke‘s Under The Mountain, her second and most recent novel. This is another fine novel by the very much underrated Cooke. This is a novel somwhat reminsicent of The Go-Between, in that it involves a child, sick in bed, during the summer holiday, who witnesses a key … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sophie Cooke‘s The Glass House. She did not make the Granta Best Young British Novelists list but I think that she should have done, as this novel is definitely better than some of the ones I read by those who did make the list. This novel tells the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Lucia Etxebarría‘s Un milagro en equilibrio [A Miracle in the Balance]. This tells the story of Eva Agulló, a Spanish woman who, early in the novel, has given birth to a baby, Amanda, and recounts her life to that date. When young she had done lots of sex, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Elena Chizhova‘s Время женщин (The Time of Women). This is story set in Soviet-era Leningrad, telling the story of Suzanna, a child who does not speak till she is seven but is yet intelligent and educated. Her mother, Antonina, who works in a factory, had had a very … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Irène Némirovsky‘s Les Chiens et les loups (The Dogs and the Wolves). This novel, unlike some of her others, is set, initially, in Kiev, where the Sinner family, a lower-middle class family, reside. Israel is a widower, bringing up a young daughter, Ada, and supporting his father-in-law. He … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Irène Némirovsky‘s Suite française (Suite française), a novel written in 1940-41 but only published in 2004. This book is in two parts. The first part tells of a few people who live in Paris and what they do just before and just after the German invasion of France … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Marilynne Robinson‘s Lila, the third book in Robinson’s Gilead trilogy. This one, of course, tells the story of Lila, whom we have met in the previous two novels as the (much younger) wife of the seventy-seven year old Reverend Ames and mother of his seven-year old son, Robby. … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Marilynne Robinson‘s Home, the second book in her Gilead trilogy. In the first book – Gilead – the Reverend John Ames told his tale and mentioned the son of his very good friend the Reverend Robert Boughton, Jack. Unlike his seven siblings, Jack had been a wilful, badly … Read more