Philip Spires commonplace book

I have kept a commonplace book for many years. It's a place where scraps of impressions are filed for future reflection. It's not a diary, it's just a mental scrapbook, concentrating on book reviews, concert reviews, visual arts and some occasional pieces on travel. It is also a place where I occasionally reflect on what I write. Details of my books can be found at http://www.philipspires.co.uk

Showing posts with label woman. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 11, 2024

A Journey to Crete, Constantinople, Naples and Florence - Three Months Abroad by Anna Vivanti

›

A Journey to Crete, Constantinople, Naples and Florence - Three Months Abroad by Anna Vivanti was published, originally for private circulat...

Monday, September 27, 2021

Mary Swann by Carol Shields

›

I have just completed four years of thinking through a project. There were several false starts, many rejected, some reworked ideas. What ...

Thursday, November 26, 2020

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

›

There is perhaps no other tale in European culture that synthesises history, myth, literature and perhaps religion as famously and as freque...

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

›

Orlando by Virginia Woolf claims it is a biography. A young man, the eponymous Orlando, is in London in the sixteenth century. At the outset...

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

A review of Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel

›

In her novel Beyond Black, Hilary Mantel presents a series of characters who ought to be Mr and Mrs, or Uncle and Auntie Normal. They all li...

Monday, June 20, 2011

Snow by Orhan Pamuk

›

When I read Snow by Orhan Pamuk a second time, I will pay more attention to its central character, nicknamed Ka. He is a poet, a Turkish émi...

Friday, June 3, 2011

Ladder Of Years by Anne Tyler

›

Delia, short for Cordelia, is the central character of Anne Tyler’s Ladder Of Years. As usual for Anne Tyler, Delia is a Baltimore resident,...

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Brick Lane by Monica Ali

›

A review should always try to address its subject in its own terms. The purpose, after all, is many-sided, to summarise, paraphrase, context...

Sunday, January 27, 2008

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

›

I read A Thousand Splendid Suns having just finished Kite Runner. I would like the opportunity to live life again (who wouldn’t?), if only t...

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

A review of A S Byatt’s A Whistling Woman

›

A S Byatt’s A Whistling Woman is a strange book. At one level it’s a straightforward account of university life, with its politics, affairs ...

›

Home

View web version

About Me

philipspires: I was born in Wakefield and was brought up in Sharslton, a mining Village. I went to London University and then became a maths teacher, working initially as a volunteer teacher in Kenya. I spent sixteen years in London, in Balham and Islington. In 1992, I left Britain for Brunei and then Zayed University in Abu Dhabi. I currently live in La Nucia, near Benidorm in Spain. I am interested in the relationship between nature and nurture, birthright and experience. Themes of culture and identity and their relation to economic and social roles underpin my writing. What we are born into relates to what we become, but we are rarely in control. What others do, our interests and intellects and the way we choose to earn a living, all of these shape us into what we become. It may be that culture is the sum of all assumptions that others make on our behalf, whereas identity represents our reactions to them. I did a PhD on the effects of education in economic development in the Philippines. I was President of Alfas del Pi Music Society for twelve years.

View my complete profile