How To Be Both could be so wanky, but somehow it’s fascinating, engaging and frequently quite hilarious. It’s also bold and difficult to describe. But well worth a read.
General fiction
The Disappearance of Emily Marr by Louise Candlish
This 2013 novel is not Candlish’s best (that is Our House) but better than average, so long as you’re willing to believe Emily Marr could be so thoroughly vilified by the British media and public for a car accident she was nowhere near. She was, however, the mistress of the man whose wife and sons […]
Villa America by Liza Klaussman
MI’m a sucker for a good lavish portrait of this 1920’s, preferably with Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald in it, and this one is as comforting as wrapping yourself in a fluffy sun-warmed towel after a dip in the chilly ocean. It concerns Sara and Gerald Murphy, wealthy American builders of a stunning house in the […]
All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
This is one of those books that should move me more than it does. There’s nothing actually wrong with it, some parts of it are truly interesting, but as a whole it didn’t fill me with rapture in the way the reviews suggest it should. Still, it’s a decent read.
The Illuminations by Andrew O’Hagan
This one’s a slow burner, but well worth a read if you have a hankering for good writing and well drawn characters. So quintessentially English.
Munich by Robert Harris
I do hope Robert Harris will again reach the gripping literary heights of the Cicero Trilogy and Fatherland, but alas he doesn’t with this one. Munich takes place in September 1938; it’s well written, dense with the comings and goings of gentlemanly diplomats, but never really engages or intrigues.
We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas
This one reminded me very much of Jonathon Frazens The Corrections, with its intimate detailing of a time and a place and a family you feel quite connected to by the end of the novel. It seems to take an astonishingly long time for Ed’s Alzheimer’s disease to be diagnosed; his wife Eileen is quietly […]
Tigers In Red Weather by Liza Klaussman
Liza Klaussman’s first novel is like an icy cocktail on a simmeringly hot day; quite delightful. The decadence of life in Martha’s Vineyard in the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s is bought languorously to life but beneath the surface the lives of her characters are not especially charmed, which makes them much more interesting. The writing […]