Joan Didion, if you are not familiar, is a challenging sort of fiction read. Simply put, she makes her own awkward rules, which for the most part, work perfectly. But don't expect to understand them the first time around. Writing fiction [...]
The day I finished reading this book I rounded a corner at Liberty at the back of Picadilly and nearly ran slap bang into the actor Bill Nighy wrapped in an expensively tight suit and French-tied scarf. He was a lot [...]
Tao Lin is either a complete genius or a complete sham. Having spent a few hours looking at videos on YouTube of him presenting his childlike scribbles to a roomful of New York's finest literati -- who chuckle along not sure [...]
Scarlett Thomas has got a fair bit of crap for this book from readers. It doesn’t appear to read as the same hand as the wonderful “The End of Mr. Y”. It’s awkwardly written, and incredibly long. It’s chaotic, and hasn’t [...]
Under the Skin by Michel Faber is a novel that slipstreams science fiction, but remains in literary realms due to the author’s careful theming and character journey. His first novel, written when he was forty years old, Faber had returned from [...]
FRIDAY 15th In the dark, the sea roars. Hannah is screaming like a cut pig, and Jess is hurling the sodden sandwiches into the night. James and Sarah are looking at the carnage. James hoists the sun umbrella’s rusted enamel point [...]
There is a temptation to label this book a “cosy mystery”, given it is about small-town murder. But this study of tightly-coiled female energy between three women, a mother and two sisters from a dysfunctional Old South family, disqualifies it from [...]
Hilary Mantel’s interests, apart from the Tudors, include ghosts and the haunted. She also used to be a social worker. This mix is brought together in a weird semi-autobiographical plot involving four characters and their reactions to a haunted house, and [...]
An unnamed female protagonist talks through her journey to find out what has happened to her father, who lives, and has gone missing, in the far northern wilds of Canada. Instead of going alone, she’s made the flippant decision to take [...]
A surprisingly English book. Lanny is the unusual boy who lives with his parents in the village. But Dead Papa Toothwart, a shapeshifting ancient woodland spirit watches the boy, and the village. This book almost shouldn't be reviewed, and I myself [...]