Bit controversial this one, but I loved it. The controversy seems to stem stem from the question of who has the right to tell migrant stories, and how to depict the countries they are leaving.
General fiction
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo
Do not be put off by the fact this Booker Prize winning novel is one long sentence (which sounds a bit wanky); it’s engaging, funny and so full of life. Evaristo takes us into the lives and minds of twelve mostly black mostly women in Britain, past and present. Each perspective presented is sublimely human. […]
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
Normally I find Ann Patchett’s studies of human nature completely absorbing but sadly this one is a little tedious. The main character Danny Conroy and his sister Maeve have an unhealthy fixation with the Dutch House, an incongruous mansion in Pennsylvania where they spent their childhood. Their evil stepmother summarily turfed them out of the […]
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
Do not be put off by the fact this book is about misogyny and too big to read in the bath; it is utterly absorbing and so, so good. I couldn’t be bothered to re-read The Handmaid’s Tale and haven’t seen the TV series but it didn’t matter; just dive right in and you’re in […]
Whisper Network by Chandler Baker
“I want you to polish that bumper bar so hard your titts wobble.” ”While you’re down there…..” The first comment was made to me by my boss, the owner of a trucking business, in 1994, when I was 22 years old and supplemented my income as a pizza chef by cleaning trucks. The second comment […]
City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert
A rollicking read that slowly morphs into a beautiful novel of surprising depth, City of Girls left me in floods of tears at the end. Which was embarrassing, as I was in the IKEA cafe. It’s kind of like watching a Disney movie; you know your emotions are being manipulated but you just can’t help going along with […]
Cape May by Chip Cheek
Book Review Haiku; Like The Great Gatsby/ But with explicit sex scenes/ Unforgettable.
The Binding by Bridget Collins
There’s a lot of swooning, falling down, suffering heart palpitations and witnessing visions in this fantastical piece of Gothic fiction. And there’s only so much of that I can take before it becomes deeply irritating. Binding is a process whereby a person’s distressing memories are removed from their mind by a binder and transformed into […]