The Emporium is a bustle of a place. People come and go. Some see magic everywhere. They have phone messages and answer their phone when it rings. Other people see less magic and a more commonplace shop selling quirky vintage wares. It depends on what they expect to see. A person looking for the impossible […]
magical realism
Review: A Lifetime of Impossible Days, by Tabitha Bird
“Wow. Just wow.” These were my first thoughts on reading the final page of Tabitha Bird’s incredible novel. A Lifetime of Impossible Days is, at its core, a heartbreaking love letter to therapy after childhood trauma. I adored the writing, I miss the characters already and I wholeheartedly endorse the argument that you can’t change […]
Review: The Book of Dreams, by Nina George
Nina George’s incredible new novel, The Book of Dreams, is about the dream world that exists between life and death. 13-year-old Sam sees the world in colours and can sense things most others can’t. He meets his father, Henri, for the first time in hospital. Henri is in a deep coma after being struck by a […]
Book review: House of Rougeaux, by Jenny Jaeckel
House of Rougeaux opens with the brutal rape and murder of a young mother right outside the door of the hut where her small children huddle in fear. Abeje and her older brother Adunbi – with barely 10 years of age between them – are left to fend for themselves as slaves on a Caribbean […]
Book review: The Toymakers, by Robert Dinsdale
Best described as a sort of Narnia for adults, The Toymakers is the story of the owners of Papa Jack’s Emporium, a magical toy store in central London that opens each year with the first frost and closes when the first snowdrop flowers. I have always loved books about magic and quirky toy stores, so I jumped […]
Book review: Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance, by Ruth Emmie Lang
Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance is the story of Weylyn Grey – an accidental, unassuming and reluctant wizard who spends most of the novel convinced that it his pig, Merlin, who is magical, rather than himself. Orphaned, raised by wolves, and the proud owner of a horned pig named Merlin, Weylyn Grey knew he wasn’t like […]
