Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts
Sunday, September 29, 2024

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

›
This is a masterpiece of story-telling. It is short - about 130 pages - and tells the tale of a man living an isolated life in New England. ...

The Children Act by Ian McEwan

›
  Ian McEwan’s novel The Children Act is probably as close to the label masterpiece as any piece of fiction might get. Having just read Davi...
Tuesday, August 27, 2024

Aaron’s Rod by D H Lawrence

›
Aaron’s Rod by DH Lawrence is a perplexing novel. It seems to represent two quite different aspects of the writer’s creativity. One side has...
Friday, April 26, 2024

A Long Way from Home - Peter Carey

›
A Long Way From Home is a novel that takes the reader a long way from any comfort zone. It is challenging in many ways and perhaps it is onl...
Tuesday, April 23, 2024

Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan

›
Unusually, I am not going to write a full review of this. To say I was disappointed by the book would be an understatement. It was clear wha...
Tuesday, October 10, 2023

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafaq

›
The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafaq is a novel about Cyprus and its recent history. Via the love affair and developing relationship b...
Tuesday, April 4, 2023

Normal People by Sally Rooney

›
Sally Rooney’s Normal People is a hugely successful and very widely read novel about millennials. It concentrates on the relationships that ...
Friday, February 17, 2023

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stewart

›
Douglas Stewart won the Booker Prize for Fiction with Shuggie Bain, an autobiographical novel about a child coping with an alcoholic parent....
Wednesday, February 15, 2023

Snow by John Banville

›
John Banville’s Snow was resplendent at number one best seller in the airport bookstore. At the time, I hardly noticed, since I was immediat...
Friday, February 3, 2023

Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse

›
  Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse provided the latest foray into the world and mores of the late fifties. It’s yet another novel that resides...

Saturday Night And Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe

›
“Once a rebel, always a rebel. You can ’ t help being one. You can ’ t deny that. And it ’ s best to be a rebel so as to show ‘em it don ’ t...

Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan

›
  Half Blood Blues is a novel by Esi Edugyan. It deals with territory that is rarely successful for the writer, that of music and musicians....
Friday, January 27, 2023

The Ambassadors by Henry James

›
Soft words butter no parsnips is an English saying that is, let ’ s admit, not overused, especially these days. It probably means get on wit...
Tuesday, November 29, 2022

›
  Day by A. L. Kennedy is a complex at times perhaps over a complex novel about an individual’s experience of and response to war. It is set...
Thursday, October 6, 2022

Cakes And Ale by W Somerset Maugham

›
  Cakes And Ale by W Somerset Maugham is a profoundly surprising book. Written in 1930, the novel begins its story in the Edwardian age prio...
Monday, July 18, 2022

Anglo Saxon Attitudes by Angus Wilson

›
  This particular reviewer rarely writes a negative review. If it didn’t communicate with me, there ’ s no need to assume that it will not c...