I really enjoyed Improvement, by Joan Silber. The writing is gorgeous, the characters are simultaneously unusual and everyday, and Silber’s tracking of the way small actions impact lives around the globe and back again is intriguing and masterful. But I have a small bone to pick. Improvement is marketed as a ‘novel’. To me, it’s not a […]
literary fiction
Review: Once Upon A River, by Diane Setterfield
I absolutely adored Once Upon a River. Diane Setterfield can really spin a yarn, she has an incredible gift for understated storytelling. Reading this book felt just as though I was sitting by the fire with an ale in the dead of winter, over a hundred years ago. The story opens on a dark midwinter’s […]
Review: Lenny’s Book of Everything, by Karen Foxlee
Lenny’s Book of Everything, by Karen Foxlee, is one of those books you press into your friends’ hands and quietly insist, “Read this.” It’s incredible, uplifting, warmly funny and devastating in equal parts. I loved every character (except the lecherous Mr King). Lenny’s little brother, Davey, is growing too quickly. By the age of six […]
Review: Our Life in the Forest, by Marie Darrieussecq
Our Life in the Forest, by Marie Darrieussecq, is an experimental future dystopian novel for those who loved The End We Start From. A future where the lucky ones have a ‘half’, an identical body lying in storage from which they can harvest spare body parts as needed. Less fortunate humans have a ‘jar’, just […]
Book review: A Superior Spectre, by Angela Meyer
A Superior Spectre, by Angela Meyer, is based on a fascinating premise of time travel by haunting. Leonora is a fabulously strong 1860s character. Raised by her father in the Scottish Highlands after her mother dies in Edinburgh, she wants nothing more than to tend to the animals and crops. Then the local laird takes […]
We See the Stars by Kate van Hooft – the haunting unreality of childhood trauma
We See the Stars, by Kate van Hooft is a hauntingly beautiful debut from a gifted storyteller about one traumatised child’s attempt to make sense of his world. I have a clear memory of flying as a child. It was in the backyard of my Nan and Pop’s house and I was alone. I took […]
