Come and escape from the world in some great books!
“They don’t disappear, the dead. It’d be easier if they did. I can see her so clearly. If she walked up those steps now, part of me wouldn’t be surprised. She was such a vivid person.” This fifth installment of Robert Galbraith's - yes, we all know it is J. K. Rowling - offers up… Continue reading Book Review: Troubled Blood, Robert Galbraith
So much more than a "black Bridget Jones"
There are people who have no time for books. Nina had met those people; usually they came into the bookstore to ask for directions and would then look about confusedly when they realized they were surrounded by these strange paper oblongs. Maybe they had rich fantasy lives, or maybe they were raised by starfish who had no access to dry printed material, who knows, but Nina judged them and felt guilty for doing so.
One problem I have - and it perhaps says more about me than anything else! - is that I tend to rely on familiar authors so in crime I have been reliant on Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad series, Susan Hill's Simon Serrailler series, Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie novels and a few others: Anthony Horowitz,… Continue reading Blood Wedding, Pierre Lemaitre
Wow! This was deliciously dark and disturbing! An ideal creepy read for that strange, unsettling time between Christmas and the New Year, where no one quite knows what day of the week it is or how long they have left on holiday! I'd listened to The Loney by Hurley as an audiobook a little while… Continue reading Book Review: Starve Acre, Andrew Michael Hurley
Why is it that the words of female sexuality - and of female anatomy - are either rendered taboo or fetishised in our society ? Vagina. Clitoris. Vulva. Menstruation. Compared to "cock", there is a different quality in these words. A frisson of shock and challenge. And that is a frisson which Broder does not… Continue reading The Pisces, Melissa Broder
Normal People. Are people normal? I don't think so. I think we are weird and strange and contradictory and self-contradictory and life primarily in delusions and bubbles of pretense and make-believe. But maybe that's me! "Normal" seems like a slur... So the point is, I'm not entirely sure what drew me to this book: it… Continue reading Normal People, Sally Rooney
Lizzie Borden took an axeAnd gave her mother forty whacks.When she saw what she had done,She gave her father forty-one. Oh, Sarah Schmidt can write! What a strange strange thing to start a review with! But there is writing and there is writing and Sarah Schmidt can write! Not only can she create a plot and move… Continue reading See What I Have Done, Sarah Schmidt
Mental health is a difficult topic to write about. A dangerous topic. It would be very easy for it to trivialise - or even worse, to glamourise - mental illness or trauma. And there were times here where is was a little concerned that the novel may be going down that route - the love… Continue reading Eleanor Oliphant Is Perfectly Fine, Gail Honeyman
This is a very difficult book to review, to consider, to - for wont of a better analogy - digest. It is also a book which I think will haunt and follow me. And, Heaven forfend, make me think. What an appalling concept! The plot, such as it is, is devastatingly simple: Kim Yeong-hye is… Continue reading The Vegetarian, Han Kang
There are some great books that I've read over the years. Neither this, nor it's predecessor, The Rosie Project, belong in that category. There are, however, other mental categories into which I file books and this did fall into one labelled silly-books-I've-read-extracts-of-to-my-wife and this does fall into that category. It is predictable; it follows an… Continue reading The Rosie Effect, Graeme Simsion
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