Mr Bridge (Penguin Modern Classics) by Evan S Connell Written ten years after his 1959 novel Mrs Bridge, Connell’s companion piece Mr Bridge tells the story of the Bridge family through the same time period from the 1930s into WWII, but from the husband’s point of view. I read and adored Mrs Bridge a couple of weeks Read More
Category: Title begins with M
A life unfulfilled, funny but full of melancholy…
Mrs Bridge by Evan S Connell Just before Christmas, I acquired a review copy of the imminent Penguin Modern Classics reissue of Mr Bridge by Evan S Connell. I knew nothing about the book at all, but the synopsis intrigued me. Finding that Connell had previously written Mrs Bridge, and that Mr Bridge was therefore Read More
What a stinker! But in a good way…
Mr Stink by David Walliams After watching the BBC’s enjoyable TV version of Mr Stink at Christmas, I was inspired to read the book to see what Walliams, who adapted his own book for the TV, and put in a cameo as the Prime Minister, was like on the page. I had read somewhere that Read More
One for the new year …
The Misinterpretation of Tara Jupp by Eva Rice Take one big happy family; add some horses, a big country manor in Cornwall, plus doses of first love which doesn’t go easily. Shake it up and relocate to London; mix with rock’n’roll and serve with love again. This is the essential recipe for Eva Rice’s new Read More
Book Group report…
A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness You can read my review of this book here, but I thought I’d share what our book group thought of it too this month. A brief note on the editions, (more about that here): most of the group read the newer adult crossover covered version (left) which is unillustrated. Read More
A woman scorned …
My First Wife by Jakob Wassermann, translated by Michael Hoffman They often say that truth is stranger than fiction. This novel is apparently no fiction – it’s one of those ‘all names have been changed’ type books! My First Wife was published posthumously in 1934, and was a thinly veiled account of the author’s first Read More
An exceptional story for all ages…
A Monster Callsby Patrick Ness The British writer Siobhan Dowd won the Carnegie Medal posthumously in 2009 for her last book, Bog Child. She’d started working on another, but died of breast cancer before she had started writing. Her outline was handed to Patrick Ness, author of the acclaimed Chaos Walking trilogy and he wrote the Read More
Who killed the penguin?
Morgue Drawer Next Door by Jutta Profijt Translated from the German by Erik J Macki. This unusual crime novel is narrated by Pascha – he used to be a car thief – the best young one in Cologne. Pascha has become a sort of detective, teaming up with Dr Martin Gänsewein, a forensic examiner for the Read More
My Policeman, Your Policeman …
My Policemanby Bethan Roberts This is a story of two people who love the same man. Firstly Marion, who fell for Tom, the brother of her best friend, the first time she saw him … He was leaning in the doorway with the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to the elbows, and I noticed Read More
Scenes from a humorist’s life …
Our book group is having a short story July, concentrating on two authors renowned for their wit: Saki and Thurber. I’m working my way through Saki, so I’ll deal with him in another post; here I’ll talk about my first experience of reading James Thurber. My Life and Hard Timesby James Thurber James Thurber (1894-1961), Read More
Revisiting a children’s classic from 1958
Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr In the Puffin edition (above), this book was my favourite contemporary children’s novel as I was growing up. I read it in the late 1960s, not once, not twice, but countless times. The story of a bed-bound girl whose drawings came to life in her dreams both entranced and scared Read More
Raining in my heart?
The Man Who Rained by Ali Shaw When Ali Shaw’s first magical novel, The Girl with Glass Feet was published in 2009, I was drawn to this adult fairy-tale like a Greek sailor to the sirens, nothing could have stopped me reading it. Luckily for me, it was good – very good. Without doubt, it Read More
A Busman’s Holiday …
The Maintenance of Headwayby Magnus Mills I’ve read and loved three of Mills’s previous novels – especially All Quiet on the Orient Express, (review here). They’re deadpan, full of black humour, and expound upon the trials and tribulations of the ordinary working man. He’s dealt with fence installers, odd jobbers, and White Van Man; Read More
2 YA/Children’s novels from April 2011 – Chris Westwood & Sally Nicholls
On the side of the angels – Ministry of Pandemonium by Chris Westwood Republished into my blog’s original timeline – one of my ‘lost posts’ Teenager Ben Harvester likes to get away from it all by taking his sketchbook into Highgate Cemetery. His Dad left his Mum several years ago, they’ve had to move into a Read More
Old reviews from Feb 2011: Jones – Lukas – Nicholls
A novel of ‘Great expectations’ – Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones With its lovely cover, and the promise of Dickensian fun in paradise, I was easily lured into this novel. I’ll admit that having missed most of the hype about it when it came out, I was expecting a soft and lightly humorous novel along the Read More
3 reviews from Jan 2011: Hornby, Jensen & Gaiman
Juliet Naked by Nick Hornby I don’t know how he does it, but there’s something about a Nick Hornby book that so hooks me, that I feel part of the story – I can always identify with some of the characters. Juliet Naked is the story of a lost rock star, a completist fan and his Read More
A Whale of a book – I finally read Moby Dick
From Jan 2011: Moby Dick by Herman Melville This was our Book Group’s choice for our Christmas 2010 read – we always tackle a classic over the festive season. This time we couldn’t decide between ourselves, so everyone threw a suggestion in the hat and this came out. Moby Dick is one of those books I always planned Read More
New Stories from the Mabinogion #4
The Meat Tree by Gwyneth Lewis. The Meat Tree is the fourth in the series of contemporary retellings of stories from the medieval Welsh story cycle The Mabinogion commissioned and published by Seren Books. See my reviews of the other titles in the series here and here. Gwyneth Lewis is an interesting author: firstly a poet, she has written a book-length poem about Read More
How music can save your life …
The Mozart Question by Michael Morpurgo Previously included in a collection of autobiographical writings and short stories (Singing for Mrs Pettigrew: A Storymaker’s Journey), the The Mozart Question was later published separately as an edition lavishly illustrated by Michael Foreman’s hazy watercolours. The former Children’s Laureate, Morpurgo, tells a simple tale about an important subject… A young reporter gets Read More
Of Gangsters and the Great Depression
The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers by Thomas Mullen It’s the 1930s in the height of the great depression, millions are out of work and bands of bank-robbing outlaws are regarded as folk heroes in the USA. Former public enemy number one, John Dillinger, has recently been sent to his grave and stepping up to the top Read More
Book Group Report – Celebrity Memoirs!
My S**t Life So Far by Frankie Boyle Out of all the celebrity memoirs available out there that we could have picked to read in our Book Group, we ended up with Frankie Boyle’s! For anyone who hasn’t seen the comedy panel game Mock the Week on BBC2, he’s a foul-mouthed Glaswegian comic who can be relied Read More
The First Detective Novel
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins This was my bookgroup’s Christmas read – we like to pick something classic for festive reading. This was a popular choice, as several of us, me included, have read Kate Summerscale’s The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, the real-life Victorian murder case which inspired Collins. I started reading well before Christmas, Read More
Two short novels – Two complex stories
This week I passed the 100 books read this year landmark, and numbers 99 and 101 were both cracking short novels… The Beacon by Susan Hill is a claustrophobic and suspenseful family drama which leaves you wondering what you believed in the tale. It tells of four siblings, Colin, May, Frank and Berenice who were Read More
A technological Cinderella story for the next generation of Microserfs
Makers by Cory Doctorow If you loved Microserfs by Douglas Coupland which chronicled life in Silicon Valley in the 90s, you’ll probably enjoy this which takes the nerds into the near future. Rather than spoofing Microsoft though, it takes Disney as the corporate behemoth that needs taking down a peg. Perry and Lester are two Read More
Now I can see why teenage girls love vampires …
Although I have more of the same stacked up, (vampire novels aimed at teenagers that is), I think I’ve worked out why teenage girls love reading them… They have all the features of many traditional favourites:- set in schools pupilled with bullies, geeks, jocks, all the usual stereotypes are there; there’s good/bad, sympathetic/not teachers; an Read More
What happens when the woman of your dreams becomes a reality?
I’ve been saving a few reviews to post until I’m ready to start talking about vampires in my Season of the Living Dead. So today it’s time to introduce you to: Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker Norman and his friend Henry are on holiday in Ireland. They duck into a church to shelter from the Read More
Monkey Business in Hollywood
Me Cheeta by James Lever This year’s oddball choice on the Booker longlist is a satire on Hollywood as seen through the eyes of Tarzan’s long-lived chimp companion. When it was published last autumn as an autobiography, the book had Cheeta listed as its writer, but it didn’t take long for the real author to Read More
Good Clean Spy Fun – with a spot of murder, and a good dose of drugs …
The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler When I saw that Penguin were reissuing five of Ambler’s novels in their Modern Classics series, the choice of which to read first was easy – I picked The Mask of Dimitrios. Apart from having been published during the same year as Chandler’s The Big Sleep, this novel Read More
From bitter almonds comes sweet romance …
Madonna of the Almonds by Marina Fiorato I was delighted to meet Marina a couple of months ago as I had so enjoyed her debut novel, The Glassblower of Murano, which I had blogged about last autumn here. She’s a real character! – half-Italian with a mass of red Titian hair, a northern accent and Read More
Another modern classic novel for older children
The Mouse and His Child by Russell Hoban This Pinnochio-esque tale for older children written in 1967 of a clockwork Daddy mouse and his child is a modern children’s classic. Deservedly so, it features a road trip for the discarded and broken wind-up mice full of adventure, peril and featuring a nasty rat-baddy, also much Read More
